


down in the dumps

by Humanities_Handbag



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Angst, Bigotry & Prejudice, F/M, Slice of Life, accidental single father, repealing laws
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-07-26 04:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7560511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanities_Handbag/pseuds/Humanities_Handbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judy Hopps expected many things from her job, but she did not expect to answer a domestic disturbance call to find a Fox holding a baby bunny at the door. </p><p>Nick Wilde didn't expected much from his life, but he certainly did not expect to find the child resting in the bottom of the garbage bin.</p><p>Neither expected to change the world. But that's how life goes. </p><p>(or: nick wilde accidentally finds revolution, justice, prejudice, reasons for living, and small animals at the bottom of a dumpster. And then he blogs about it.) </p><p>single father au</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adrieunor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrieunor/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because, he wants to scream into the phone. Because I’m talking to myself, and I’m trying to blame the world because that’s the easiest, most convenient thing to do, and I think I’m about to make the most idiotic, fuck stew idea of my entire life and I really need you to stop me.
> 
> Instead he says; “I just found something that needed my attention.”

Nicholas Wilde, despite all attempts to feel otherwise, was exhausted.

It was hotter than the weather app on his phone had predicted, and their single round of pawpsicle’s hadn't sold out, a first for weeks. Little Rodentia was recovering from a recent water break in the sewers next door and all construction was shut down temporarily, and he hadn’t found a person to bankroll them into a second day's worth of fares, no matter how big his partners eyes got.

So he sat, frustrated, sucking on one of the many spare ices in the back of Finnick’s van. Moping about this and that and wondering if it was worth it to try and imagine up a solid Plan B when A and C had so far done nothing and the linear track was seeming less and less likely to pull results.

The other Fox sat up front, elephant costume half donned, scrolling through contacts on his phone with a speed that could have given bullets a migraine. It was an obnoxiously bright day. The sun trying to prove something to the animals below it, screaming down with an obnoxious display of _hot hot hot_ that left the air dry and wrung out, and any car unfortunate enough to not find a pool of shade was turned into a sauna. Their van had ended up being on the list of unfortunates, and the two animals inside were doing their best to ignore the way they slowly roasted.

Nick rolled his neck, beads of sweat running down. The pawpsicle in his hand was turning sticky, drops hanging off the ends before landing on his fingers, pearling on his wrist. The red tucked against orange like an absurd art project and his long tongue shot out to smudge it in.

Cherry.

He hated cherry.

“You sure you don’t have anything over your way?” Finnick had called one of his questionable less than legals and was leaning back against the seat, leaning his arm out the window. The person on the other end said something, their voice a windchime of curses and laughter.. “Well fuck you too.” He hung up, tossing the phone into the passenger seat. “No one’s got work.”

“Yeah. I noticed.” He gave the pawpsicle a lick. “Made shit, too.”

“We can just go through our route.”

“You know we can’t.”

Finnick sneered, sucking on his teeth. “ _You_ can’t. Cause you don’t got any balls.”

“Says the fox in the elephant suit. You look cute, by the way.”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

The day had been a bad one. And it didn’t look like it’d be picking up anytime soon.

Worst by far: their regular route, a money hub of business mammals and subway surfers, was temporarily off limits due to an infestation that neither had prepared for. The city had decided _that day_ they were going to hold the biggest police academy graduation to date (a fact that the newspapers had decided to tell him _too many times_ over the last week, headlines sparking with praises of _Largest Graduating Class!_ and _Safest City Year Predicted!_ and the most laughable of all, _First Rabbit Cop Set to Join Precinct 1!_ ) and it landed itself squarely onto _his route_.

“It’s the best intake we’ve got,” Finnick pulled down the hood of his elephant costume farther, rubbing slick paws through sweat matted fur, watching Nick from the corner of his rear view mirror. “We gotta hit it, Nick.”

“You wanna spend the night in a cell?”

“I live in a fucking van.” He searched through his pockets for a cigarette. Came short with lint and rolling paper and a whole lot of nothing and cursed through an empty mouth. “You think I’d say no to a night there?”

“Finnick, my man, you never ceased to surprise me.”

“Shut your damn mouth, Wilde.” He sorted through lists they’d collected on the passenger seat. Ice cream parlors having weekly sales. Different odd jobs that needed filling. Helpless people that wouldn’t see a scam coming if it painted them blue. “So what? We gonna go hungry today?”

“We have saved up cash. We’re fine.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“That’s gonna kill you one day, you know.”

“Does it look like I’ve got shit to live for.”

Nick scoffed, flipping through the small stack of dollar bills they’d managed to collect. A few street corners here and there. They’d chosen safer routes. Ones that proved to be less lucrative, but tended to house less activity of the blue and red variety. He’d been doing it long enough to know what to look for. Who to look out for. And on days where the City’s Finest shined their badges and wore their Sunday best, he was wise enough to stay out of their way.

Untouchable was a house for the naive, after all.

“We’ll do one more spot,” he tells his partner, weighing the cash on his paw one more time before pocketing it with a snort. His jaws snapped around the end of the popsicle stick, tasting old factory wood and cherry. “Call it a day after that. Then you can go and blacken your lungs. Sharpie ‘em down for all I care.”

“One more thing about my health and I’ll huff and puff.”

“Sure you will, ashtray.” Finnick grumbled, pulling the hood of his costume up, blinking his eyes back to their fullest. Nick held out his hand, grabbing the little paw in his own, ignoring the way the Fennek pricked his claws through with just enough force to sting. “Now come on. Daddy’s got his eye on a new flatscreen, and standing here isn’t gonna do anything!”

* * *

Out of curiosities sake, they end up passing through Central Park. The place is packed with cops. Cops. More cops. Finnick snarls next to him, all teeth and old and musk, and he gives his hand a tug.

On stage, their mayor of all mayors presents each and every graduate with a certificate, a handshake, a quick namedrop that either ends with them puffing up proudly or bashfully lumbering their way back to their seat.

The Fenneck next to him snorts. “Like we needed more’a them after us.” Nick hums his agreement. And then-

Oh.

Oh my _god_.

“-first Rabbit officer-!”

A brown bear whipped his head to stare at the baby in the elephant costume who let out an ungodly loud “ _Holy shit_ ” that had Nick kicking him in the shin which _really_ didn’t help because then two other horses were staring at _him_ and oh god, this day was already shit enough why did this have to happen _now_ -

But hell. This was just too good to miss.

The rabbit on stage looked full of herself. A little puff of pride and self determination, eyes bright with fresh burrow air. She’d probably never spent a week in Zootopia Nick surmised easily, looking from the top of her sharp ears to the bottom of the soft feet. “Dumb dumb bunny.”

“You got that right.” The bear gave them another look. Finnick flipped him off, big babe eyes and all. “That girls not gonna last a fuckin’ _week_.”

“Five days,” the taller shoots back.

“We bettin’ on this?”

“Sure.”

“Fifty.”

Nick shrugs and says, “Double it.” He watches the rabbit wave to her parents, her badge pinned on by the assistant mayor. Her little victory for the day won before she’d be dumped through the shredder and torn into itty bitty pieces. Maybe they’d use her as a good luck charm later. At least get some _use_ to her. Which he wanted to see. He really did.

No one lasted that long in this city. Not people like her. Not Prey who didn’t know. Or hell, maybe she’d think all the laws were just dandy and she’d be the best little policy enforcing Predator stomping bunny cop of all time. The thought left ash on his tongue. “Come on.” He gave Finnick’s hand a tug. “We have to go.”

“But I wanna watch her! I think that tiger over there’s ‘bout ta have an aneurism!”

“Come on, Finnick. Listen to daddy.”

“You got a death wish, Wilde?”

“Cigarettes.”

The argument is over promptly, and Finnick trails after, the both of them glancing over their shoulders at the hypocritical emblem of mammal inclusion smile and wave between flashing lights and a sense of second hand dread that no passerbyer could stand to inhale.

* * *

  
They manage to sell a baker's dozen more before they’re splitting what cash they made for the day, both managing a few farewell grumbles before saluting goodbye. Finnick drove off to the melodies of a soundtrack that left the air streaked red, promises of drug store paradise on his mind (“booze, cigs, pack of moon pies” - “have fun with your heart attack”), and Nick fell into step in the opposite way.

The celebrations are long since over, and when he passes the park it's full of red solo cups and leftover cupcake wrappers and a few patches of browning grass where drinking had gotten out of hand. A few animals with cameras are mulling, taking pictures of the stage for more news stories. He stays out of the way, sticking close to the walls.

Skulking.

Like a fox does.

Like a fox _should_.

It wasn’t a far walk, and most of it was spent watching the world dissolved around him into something familiar. Grassy patches on sidewalks and street cleaners swiftly leaving, making room for shattered glass bottles and used condoms and garbage two days late being picked up. Nick shoved his hands into his pockets, teasing a ball of lint and the idea that takeout wasn’t such a bad idea. He didn’t have anything in his fridge, the old thing barely working anyway.

The air was awash with tension released. Sky filled with sugar drunk clouds, heavy, soon to pour. He doesn't have a jacket. He never has a jacket.

He was halfway through a glitchy menu on his phone, considering either a bug burgah topped in as much hot sauce as they could legally allow, and something else stuffed with cheese and calories to sate an elephant, when-

His ears perk up. Catching something. The dregs of a leftover noise.

It’s nothing. Must be nothing. And he considers agreeing with himself and drowning out the possibility of nothing being _something_ when suddenly that nothing _does_ become and something and he’s left clutching his phone, peering down the dimming streets.

The nothing makes another noise. Or is it the _something_ now?

“ _Sir?_ ” he jumps at the crackle of a new noise (not nothing. something. definitely something), looking down at his paw. He’d accidentally called the fast food place, the time stamp already ticking at 23 seconds. _“Sir, are you there_?”

Nick fumbles, eyes still on the street. On the flickering lights. On the Nothing-Something that hides in the shadows. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“Do you want to order, sir?” They sound like a bored teenager who couldn’t give a shit whether or not he did or didn’t, but apparently wasn’t happy about those 23 seconds. And was going to make that fact _very_ clear. “You called, sir. Do you _want_ anything.”

“Yeah. Uh- _no_? Yeah?”

“I’m not a game show host, sir. You need to choose.”

The Something-Nothing chirps. Nick lowered the phone.

It was one of the older parts of Zootopia. The part of town where shoulders were weighed down enough to bend spines and settle them into a West Side Downtown Slouch. It’s a sound that doesn’t belong in their part of town except from through dust tinted windows and cigarette smoke hazes. Skinny streets and cobblestone that hadn’t been upkept and was left in a mess of puzzle parts and vanished history. The apartments were little more than upscaled tenements and the spaces between them were skinny line art grids without room to move save for the garbage thrown in every Wednesday and Friday (and every other day, depending how you looked at it) mixing in with old sewage and weeks old beer spills.

It’s in one of those alleyways between two brownstone’s labeled with hundred year old factory advertisements that the Something-Nothing makes its presence known.

“Sir!”

“What! Oh. Yeah, sorry. Um- I keep hearing a _noise_ and-”  
  
“Sir I really don’t care. If you’re not gonna order, I’ll hang up.”

The Nothing-Something peeps.

So Nick makes the frustrated teenagers life easier (sir? sir are you there?) and hangs up for them.

“Hello?” There’s an elderly tiger sitting on the cracked stoop a few houses down who looks at the Fox speaking to air and nothing and _something_ , but ignores him, dragging on a pipe. It smells like spice and tar, and Nick can smell it around the hazy aroma of tuna fish and pond muck. “Hey. Is there something there?” Nothing. He creeps forward, ducking into the dark alley. Looking down, avoiding stepping on rusted nails and half empty bottles of flavored lube. “Hey. You really shouldn’t be out here. It’s a dumb choice, hiding in an alley.”

Which is hypocritical as hell. Because god, isn’t that just what he’s doing now.

Nick shakes off the thought, sticking close to the wall, trailing his hand along graffiti tags. “Hey. You wanna maybe leave? Before something comes that isn’t as nice as me?”

The Something-Nothing says nothing.

Says _something_.

It’s a _peeping_ noise. A muffled _cheeping_. Like someone was crushing a squeaky toy between two plastic bags.

Nick ducks father into the space, closed in by the walls, and sniffs.

Straightening his tie, ducking past red brick and stepping delicately over egg shells and week old chicken bones. The place reeked, and his nose turned up at the smell of leftover and forgotten that was pungent enough to work its way into the back of his lungs, tasting it on his tongue. The keening picked up- little squeaks that caught the edges of metal and echoed down the slopes of melted ice cream dribbled aimlessly down the sides of logos speckled on misused recycling bins.

It takes him a few tries to find where the noise is coming from. Checking under dumpsters and in the cracks of the wall he comes empty handed. It isn’t until he’s above it that anything works itself out into clarity. An old metal tin, dented and long since succumbed to a greenish calcium build up. The top is on tight, and it takes a few pulls and a lot of strength he doesn’t have to work it off its place, letting it drop to the ground.

The Something-Nothing cheeps, and this time it’s not so muffled.

Jackpot.

He stretched his neck over and looked in. Expecting a bird. A lost toy. Expecting the something to be nothing but-

There’s a new scent, a new noise, a new everything. Milky and soft, _so soft_ , and his nose wrinkles at the unknown not belonging that has found its way into his comfortable. Whatever the Nothing-Something is, it’s not supposed to be there. As strangely averse to this environment as stars against the bog

-it’s something.

A small, wiggling creature that looks more like an ugly, paper thin kidney bean than anything else. Looks like something. Like _nothing_.

He swallows, following the shape, the curve, flipping through his encyclopedia of animals and the ones that hate him more, most, **_completely_ ** , and the very last page reserved for total abhorrence is where he finds her picture, plastered bright next to helvetica pt. 48 font underline underline underline permanent marker etc. etc. etc.

 **Rabbit** (n.): a burrowing, gregarious, plant-eating mammal with long ears, long hind legs, and a short tail. [See; prey, doe, buck.] {Used in a Sentence: The **Rabbit** was instinctively afraid of it’s primary predator, the Fox. See; sly, trickster, vulpine, predator predator predator pred-}

It’s a _rabbit._

The something, the nothing-

A rabbit _kit_.

There area is so densely Predator one could swim with the tide and still get pulled under. This thing he’s found doesn’t belong.

And it knows that.

It lets out another cry, high pitched and wailing, and his ears push back. He looks left. Right. Combs the space he’s taken up (too much space - babe plus him), but sees no one.

Sees Nothing. Sees -

 _Something_.

It's thin, and if he squinted he could just see the ribs poking out of its pink body. A skin encased wicker basket like the ones he made in his third grade art class. A day old, maybe. Three, perhaps. He wasn't really accustomed to the growth cycle of Rabbit's. The last time anyone had even mentioned that was when his grandfather had been over for the first and last time, ranting about how to properly cook a buck. But even then his mother had raced the old man out the door, and talk of rabbits stopped from there.

_Come on Nicky, don't pay him any mind. Don't pay any of them any mind._

But this isn’t a grandfathers stories or a hushed conversation between predators behind stone walls. It’s a baby. A baby rabbit. In a garbage can. Not nothing anymore.

Something something _something_

 **Something** (prn): a thing that is unspecified or unknown [See: undecided, strange, miscellaneous, odd, baby rabbits in alleyways and the foxes who find them]

For the first time in what seems like forever, Nick Wilde cannot hide his emotions. He’s scared. Scared shitless. The Something-Nothing of a baby cries out again, and it flips over to reveal a belly concave in hunger, wiggling tiny paws up. There’s a moldy pickle chip stuck between its feet. But still it reaches, reaches, reaches-

-reaches for him.

He is a Fox who has done so much in his life, but cannot account for a single moment where he imagined himself the savior of a Rabbit in any way.

This thing wasn’t meant for Foxes. It was meant for a life of charmed blissful ignorance, stepping over him on its way through streets crowded over in priviledge he’d never be able to touch. This thing was a brewery of its own hatred, and all it does is begin to stem his own straight from the tap.

Hate rises, as it should. His body is a house on fire, and he can’t find any doors. Watching the heat crawl to the attic and set aflame whatever pity he has left. Survival. That’s what this place is about. What _he's_ about.

You learn to jump, or you burn.

“Someone’ll come get you,” he tells the thing sitting under the lid of the garbage can. “No one just leaves a baby.” Well… no one left _Prey_ babies. Now, if it had been a Fox... The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth besides the already heavy one of old waste, and he shifted the lid of the garbage can back into its place, watching the thing disappear beneath. A lettuce leaf ruffled with the movement, sliding down a banana peel to land against its back. “You’ll be fine. Stop crying.” The thing sniffled. Curled and wiggled. A soda can falls loose and something sticky, old, bled out and clumped against the things skin.

He puts the lid back on the can with a muffled _ding_ of metal meeting a year’s worth of calcium buildup and mold. Makes sure to crack it enough so there’s light, air. He’s not a monster, he tells himself. And the thing under there won't have enough memory to remember him as anything more than a Fox. If anything at all.

In his line of business, you were only bad if someone could remember you long enough to slap the label on.

He turns around, heel leaving skid marks in the puddles, and walks away. The kit doesn’t cry again until he’s out of the tight alleyway, shuffling along the wall, and his wrist moves quick, hand arching to his pocket to extrapolate his glasses and shove them against his face. And when he finally does make his way back into the streets, the Something-Nothing he left behind lets out a hymn of grief.

He is practiced at forgetting, and this can’t be an exception.

* * *

It is an exception though. Especially when he’s sitting on his couch watching a rerun of some cartoon he’d seen first in high school, grainy with nostalgia and production value, and his ribs give a little, twisting ache. Outside he can hear the beginnings of a steady storm. Had felt it in the air, collecting, all day. And outside it announces itself with heady rumbles- a hungry sort of vengeance that won't be ignored.

The cartoons continue on screen. He draws his legs closer. Tries not to think about - _tries not to wonder_ about: fails miserably and _thinks_. And then, to himself: the baby might still be in the trash.

His house is on fire, it’s on fire, it’s on-

(fire fire fire fire, _I hate them because they hate me and that makes sense and things need to make sense and what I’m thinking doesn’t make sense_ , fire fire fire fire)

He’s off the couch in an instant, falling into a pace that brings him back and forth across the length of his small apartment. From downstairs he can already hear the grumblings of people, annoyed endlessly by any noise that befell them. “I left a baby.” he says out loud into the empty space. “I saw a baby rabbit. And I left in in a _trash can_.”

The space doesn’t say anything back. But the walls are old enough to tell stories, and right then he can feel those tales squinting at him, judgement peeling the paint.

“Foxes don’t get breaks,” he reasons to the walls, the television, the colorful cartoon characters who watch him with rapt attention. “We don’t fucking _get breaks_ . And it’s _fine_ for me to leave a rabbit. A rabbit would leave a fox. Right?”

He thinks, _yes. They would have._ A rabbit _would_ have seen a baby Fox and turned the other direction. And he isn’t sure if they would have left it or done something worse (an idea that he shakes from his mind as fast as he can, but it sticks nonetheless and tastes like bile and blood and something old), and he snarls, snout pulling back ripples. It’s the truth. And he knows it to be nothing but.

Predators were hard enough to find homes for as it was. _Foxes_ were left out like month old newspapers, dripping ink and answers against age crumbled walkways.

“A rabbit would leave a Fox,” he says again. “So I can leave a rabbit. And that’s fine. That’s _fair_ . No… No it’s not. But neither is life. So the rabbit can just suck it up and deal with its problems like the rest of us.” Trying to sound sure. Trying to sound _confident_ in that fact. No matter what he does, it doesn’t seem to want to come out that way. Instead it sort of flops and shreds between his teeth. Flattens out and hisses and deflates at the last, sloppy syllable. “I can leave a rabbit,” he sits down on the couch, leaning back against the ratty, torn up backing. “I can do that. Because someone will come find them. Because they’re a rabbit.” A breath. “A rabbit would leave a Fox.”

The air smells like stale chips and coming rain, and its tight with a judgement that he’s hoping is coming from the neighbors downstairs who had taken to tapping their ceiling with brooms, and the walls themselves. Not from the way his stomach twists and his ribs hurt more than they did before.

His phone is out, and he’s dialing the numbers before he can think to do anything else. Grabbing the remote, he mutes the television with more force than intended. The characters mouth their phrases and he can hear what isn’t there.

The phone rings. And rings again. And then it stops ringing.

“Finnick?” Talk first. Always talk first.

“Nick,” says Finnick, like a curse. A bad taste. “What? You find another hustle’r somethin’?”

“No.” He swallows. Reaching behind him, he toys with the ratty blanket hanging over the edge, picking at a frayed string with his claws. “I -uh- I don’t think we’ll do anything tomorrow.”

There’s a long silence. It fills up the room with its stale chips and rain and _not fair not fair not fair_ , and he cracks his knuckles to fill up some of the space. “You shitting me?”

“No.”

“You _never_ take breaks.”

“Well… I’m taking one tomorrow.”

“Why the fuck would you do that!”

 _Because_ , he wants to scream into the phone, grabbing the edge of the couch and lifting himself off. His keys are somewhere, lost in the mishmosh of a bachelor's life, and he’s already set on finding them, _because I’m talking to myself, and I’m trying to blame the world because that’s the easiest, most convenient thing to do, and I think I’m about to make the most idiotic, fuck stew idea of my entire life and I really need you to stop me_.

Instead he says; “I just found something that needed my attention.” (Which is rediculous. Becasue now he sounds like a fucking starched collar worker instead of a sly Fox with sticky fingers, and Finnick is _definitely_ squinting into the phone, he can _see it_ ) “Take a break. You need a break.”

“I also need rent, fucker.”

“And cigarettes.”

“Cigarettes can wait. There are slower ways to die.” He can hear his partner scratching the back of his head, breathing in and out and doing his best to quell the curses that are no doubt sitting dormant and unfiltered on the tip of his tongue. “Look, whatever dumb ass idea you’ve got planned, don’t do it. I know you. You’re gonna go out and do something stupid and it’s gonna wind back and bite you right in the ass.”

“Your confidence astounds me.”

“I’m serious, Nick.”

“And I’m not?”

Finnick lets one of those curses wake up and fly out, hitting the phone with a force that has Nick scowling. “Do you hear yourself? You always do this, Nick. You go out to find a new gig and the next day you end up beat on a street corner and I end up having to put your bloody face back together.”

“Well… that’s not gonna happen this time.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes _really_.” He finds his keys under a stack of magazines, tossing them to the side where they lie shiny and unread on the floor. “This time there’s no mob bosses and I’m not selling rugs.”

“That just means you're doing something stupider.”

Nick wonders if Finnick is right.

Decides that he is.

He swallows the admission back, grabbing his coat from the closet, upsetting the row of wire hangers that chitter and patter complaints at him as he closes the door. The smaller Fox has a point. And there’s a part of Nick, standing in his apartment, pulling one sleeve up his arm, that has to wonder just how hard it’ll hurt when this thing does bite him. If he can make the sting a less gruesome one.

He can. Just make it quick. Band-Aid effect at its best.

_You’re not a charity case, Nick Wilde. You’re a temporary B &B. One, two nights tops. And then your debt to your soul and these walls is eternally paid. Hallelujah. Praise Marian. You’re a good fucking Fox who totally deserves a clean slate. _

He adjusts the phone against his ear. “It’ll be fine. Just a few days break, alright? Just so I can sort things out. And then it’ll all go back to normal.”

“Normal?”

“Some semblance of normal.” He puts the other sleeve into place. “I’ll get you your money, if that’s what you want. Just give me a few days, alright? There’s some shit I gotta deal with.”

He’s got the approval when, from the other line, the Fennek mutters, “Don’t do something stupid.” As if he already knows. As if he’s reading Nick through the static. That Nick has decided something against his nature. And that there’s nothing that will stop him now. He’s a one track engine set on fire, and the conductor has long since jumped overboard. “Don’t fuck stuff up for yourself. It looks bad on me.”

“You care about me!” Snide. Smart. Sarcastic. _Safe_.

Finnick snorts. “We’re a two man act. You're my meal ticket.”

“I’ll treat you to a beer later.”

“You’re a fucker,” Finnick says again. But he doesn’t say no.

Which is something, he guesses.

Something.

(Nothing)

* * *

Nick is out the door the moment Finnick hangs up, pushing his phone into his pocket and speeding down the hall. The neighbors yell something behind him about stupid foxes and all their noise, but he drowns them out with thoughts about plans. Hoping that by the time he gets there, she’ll be gone. And he can just think that it was taken by a nice couple. And that it’s not been picked up by a feral bird or already taken by the cold and the first drops of rain and the hunger and the starvation and... or…

something.

nothing.

He nearly has a heart attack when he takes the lid off the garbage can and doesn’t see the kit. His ears flickering, he can barely find a heartbeat until it reaches his ears. Soft. Hardly there. He sifts through new garbage that had been tossed in carelessly by passing animals, finally finding it wedged between a fast food packet of soggy fries and a string of pink, pulpy gum. It’s not crying. Not anymore. It’s gone softer, shivering under the damp, sickly government issued street lamps that dotted the area like bad omens and he’s in the spotlight. His shadows swallows it. Claims it.

He moves it around.

It.

Something. Nothing. _It_ -

 _She_.

Well… that at least answered one question.

She's cold. Wet with filth, some from the garbage, some of her own, and there's a short moment where he thinks she might be dead and he was only imagining all the sounds, but when she twitches he finds he's more horrified at the concept of her still alive.

He knows these streets and how they breathe. Things like this -half frozen, two thirds living- don't survive long.

“Shit…”

Only days old and starving. She’s naked, still bloody with afterbirth. Her legs twitch with an effort to stay alive, disrupting a half full bag of chips and cheesy puffs. Her eyes are shut tight, crusted over with something that might be natural or infection or garbage she’d rolled in. Her nose wiggles.

If she wasn’t dead, she would be. Soon.

“Hey there, Garbage Baby,” Nick says, reaching down. She was half the size of his paw, and in it she’s still. He rolled her back and forth, weighing the small specimen like gold. She sniffles. Her skin was puckered and wrinkled all over, and she looked more like a Goblin than anything else. Something that might come out of the saturday morning cartoons about evil aliens invading their city, made from loose skin and vengeance. She didn't do much of that though.

She just snuffled against the black pad of his paw and tried her hardest to figure out how to keep breathing. He nudged her chest. Feels a heartbeat- small and quick and stuttering. She let out a little coughing noise, and chokes back on life.

“Finnick said not to do something stupid,” says Nick to the Garbage Baby. “And by all accounts, you’re a stupid something.” The kit shivered. Nick breathed, pulling on foul air. “What’d’ya say, Garbage Baby? You think I’m stupid enough?”

She mewls.

It’s an agreement if he’s ever heard one..

He tucked her into the breast pocket of his coat as easy as a packet of unfiltered and prays to Marian that she’ll be an easy fix to quit. He’s still got nicotine burns between his fingers and a twitch at the side of his mouth that stings when he smiles from repetition and isn’t ready to pick up other bad habits quit long enough ago to rarely mean much anything anymore.

She wriggled deeper into the pocket and, for the time being, slept.

* * *

When he wakes her she’s decided that, above all else, nature is King.

And justly, as instinct intended- the child is terrified of him.

She’s too small to do much on her own, but when he rinses her clean under a clouded stream of water in his sink, holding her over dirty plates and empty ketchup packets, she wiggles against his claws and cries. Eyes have yet to open. Ears have yet to form. But she can make noise. And she keens in little squeals and squeaks that don’t go very far. Nibbles on his paw in vengeful attempts at release (big bad sly Fox, I will defeat thee), but he just curls his claws around her, keeps her held tight. He checks the water with his other hand, and puckers his lips, turns it warmer.

“Sorry…” he says, sounding gruffer than he means to, but gruff as he means. “I mean… I’m not sure what I’m even sorry for.” Which is true. He’s not. Not really.

Prey are meant to be afraid of Predators. That’s what he’s learned. That’s what's right.

Still.

He ducks her back under the stream of water, rubbing careful fingers across her back and over her face. She sneezes, keening. But he keeps at it, grabbing at a paper towel and balling it up enough to clean out her ears pulling out mustard and horseradish and something sickly sweet. She has no teeth, but she still tries for another bite. There’s bubblegum stuck to her skin, and it takes three washes with laundry detergent to get the scent of rotting chinese food out from her paws.

“Cry all you want, Fluff.” The water switches off, sink draining with a clogged gurgle, ketchup packets floating aimlessly about.The apartment is loud in its silence and his voice takes up space. He carries her carefully in his paw between the folds of the towel, her nose sticking out. Smelling for something. Predators, maybe. Him. “You’re not getting out of this. Life is non negotiable. You can hate me later.”

He dries it. Watches it move useless limbs back and forth, crying enough to watch its stomach inflate through each sorrow, letting each out generously, one by one. She’s small, smaller in the moments after the muck and loose fur has washed itself away, and she’s left balding, scared, cold, on his floor wrapped in a towel.

Nick doesn’t know what to do next.

“You tell me.” He lies down. The floor is cool, and the chill soaks through his shirt when his stomach presses, skin flush to hardwood. “What do I do next?”

The kit rolled onto its back, looking worse for wear. Nick reached out with a paw and rolled it back. She rocked like an old weebly toy, new claws making small melodic skips. So he watches her. Watches the way she fears him and tries to get away, only to give up in a hopeless little heap of skin and bones and something and nothing

He watches her. Looks her over.

Her stomach is still puckered in.

“Food,” he says out loud. “Right. You need food. _I_ need food. Else I'd just go and eat you." She squeaks. "Sorry. Poor taste.” Another look. “You need clothes. Or something like that. Not gonna let your naked ass wander around my pad.”

She squeaks again. He pushes her over, watches her wobble and fall. _Clean slate_ , he rehearses.

* * *

  
The days haul of dollar bills sits in his pocket as he scans the isles of the supermarket. It’s uncharted territory, and he has to comb through boxes and bottles (Tiger, Bear, Deer) before he finds small Prey on the bottom shelf, settled between a layer of dust. There’s twelve different kinds of rabbits, apparently, and his head is swimming with information he hasn’t even let himself begin to register.

She hadn’t grown into her fur yet, and her size wasn’t much of a factor. So when he’s reading through Lionhead and Enlgish Lop and folding his brow through the headache of god knows what other breeds there were, he’s left to flounder through his short, awkward memories of her with lettuce on her head as the only source he’s got. With a growl he chose the shiniest box, dumping it into the basket.

Garbage Babies can’t be choosers.

He scrolled through his phone as he peruses the dairy isle.

A site with colorful letters and a font chosen last minute, it gives him recipe after recipe of different things to mix together. He picks up a too expensive container of greek yogurt, grumbling about children and their stupid immune systems ( _Remember!_ The site preached, _Only greek yogurt! Anything less and it can damage organs and impede digestion!_ ). He grabs a dropper from the personal goods isle, turning his back to a Lion grabbing condoms with a little too much stealth - _yeah right, buddy, like you’re an extra large_ \- and works his way through the rest of the store.

It’s not a long trip, and it ends with him and a basket filled with diapers, baby wipes, formula, and too many things with the word _rabbit_ on them for his comfort. He’d grabbed lettuce and a box of frozen bug burgers to hide everything underneath them, shoving a plastic bag of cheap bruised discount basket apples on top of the pacifier he’d picked up as a last minute decision.

The line wasn’t too long, and he picked out the more tired looking register, hoping maybe they wouldn’t notice.

But they always do.

For Foxes, they _always_ do.

He gets a few looks from the Koala at the cash register when he dumps the eyedroppers and Rabbit formula on the belt. “Sir…” she says, scanning one of the items with a metallic _ding_. “You… you sure you got the right things?”

Nick grabs his glasses from his pocket. Dons them. “M’sure.”

“Because if you need any help-”

“I’m sure.” he says again. She swallows, eyes darting to his teeth, and says nothing else. It costs him a whole day's worth of pawpsicle wages, with pocket change to spare. He’s left to bag the things himself when the short Pig at the end makes a move to hide herself behind her coworker. He doesn’t look her way. Nods once, collects his goods.

And then;

“Sir?” The Koala looks heinously uncomfortable. And her eyes can barely meet his. But still, she rises from her spot as the Supermarket junior manager (as proof by her thin plastic nametag, scribbled on in silver sharpie) and becomes the apparent _hero of the day_ for all who work at Quick n Cheep Groceries. “Do you- do you have your proof of relations papers?”

It’s something he never thought he’d have to hear. His hackles rise, and he can taste the brine of bile in the back of his throat.

Just. The kid isn’t even _his_. And he still wants to hiss. Still wants to say: leave me be. please. for once, leave me be.

He thinks about the Bunny officer. How she'll be asking mammals soon. How she'll be the one with the torch and the dagger and not know the difference.

His city was never kind to those like him. Those born with teeth, claws, and a disposition just like any other. With a _history_ . Predators can't just keep Prey. They need city approval. To prove. To prove _something_. To prove they aren't gonna eat them, harvest them, sell them. Revert. Like monsters. Animals.

 _Predators_.

The law was enacted before his time when the idea of tame collars was still being bounced around. His father had told him about those terrifying few weeks where Predators had held their breath.

The result has been less extreme, but no less entangling. For them. But not for him. Not until-

 _She’s not yours_ , Nick reminds himself sourly, watching the Koala figet with her name badge, her hand drifting under the counter where he was sure she was tracing the lifted outline of a security button. _The baby isn’t yours. You don’t need them. You’re throwing her out soon. She’s not yours. You don’t_ **_need them_**.

Predators could not be involved with Prey. And a few years later, when activists had raged the streets, they'd changed it once again.

If involvement was wanted, proper papers had to be filed. To prove the Predators in question were docile enough to be in the presence of the those they sought after. Romantic. Familial. If the others involved didn't have teeth and claws, then the papers were a must.

The tame collar idea was shelved, but never quite buried, and the people in charge had allowed the leniency to be seen as a victory.

If someone could call it that.

Nick didn't. He wouldn’t have. But he’d learned: you don’t fight for things that don’t touch you. Because then they touch you. And then you’re as good as smothered.

He breathed in. Remembered. _She’s not yours_.

This is the world he lives in. Where Foxes skulk and hustle and papers prove families and he's one predator trying to drag everyone else under the bus while he drives and drives and drives away.

He lifted his glasses and smiled, tight, tight, tight. “It’s for a friend,” he drawled through his teeth, making sure to tuck them away behind his lips. “Nice rabbit couple. Just had a baby and mom can’t leave home.”

“Oh…” the Koala, _Sharla_ is her name, deflates. “Is that all?”

 _Lies lies lies, Nicholas Wilde, you’re a liar, you’ve always been a liar, clean slate, clean slate, first mark on a clean slate_ \- “Yeah. That’s all.”

And he takes his bags. And he walks out the door.

Leaves.

And that’s all.

* * *

The sun outside is blaring and the bag in his hand is heavier than it should be and rustles at every stray gust of wind. One hand in his pocket, he strolls as confidently as he can for someone who might just be panicking on the inside, and makes his way back home to the baby in his sink and the judgement peeled walls that await him when he returns.

“Honey! I’m home!” The door slams, and the kit from his sink keens. Which is a good thing, he thinks. Still alive. Maybe pissed that he left her in a sink. But she could deal. “Yeah, yeah.” Nick drops the groceries on the floor, picking her up from where she’d gotten her left leg stuck between the plug and the drain. “You’re mad. I get it. Cry me a damn river.” Her eyes still aren’t open, and he suspects it’ll be a few days before that happens, but somehow she manages a _glare_.

A very _potent_ glare.

He makes her a box. There’s no way he can settle her on the couch- one fall was a canyon jump for the tiny sack of bird bones and china and ( _fragile delicate new_ ) something Nick isn’t sure could withstand a passing breeze. The thing is still settled on a towel on his floor. He’d rolled up a bathmat and three washcloths and trapped her in with something that looked like a teddy bears medieval torture holding cell, and she treats it as such, bumping against the sides with her nose, tugging with her mouth. Making valiant, dare he call them _heroic_ , efforts to scale the sides before falling onto her back, a turtle on its shell.

It takes some digging under his sink, but he finds the old tomato crate filled with bleach and window cleaners all hardly used, evidence proven enough by the mildew stains crawling up the antiqued wainscoting that attempted to produce some level of sumptuosity.

He cleaned it out with a half an old sponge in his shower and the dregs of a soap bottle he’d bought a month ago and when that wasn’t enough he dug through his shower and produced shampoo, splinters and suds dragging down the drain,. The crate smelled like ocean breeze or whatever shit he’d picked up from the corner dollar store. He lined it with clean towels. Left it in the corner by the old, creaking monster of a radiator that kept his small place heated even when he didn’t want it to be.

That done, he goes through the pandora’s box of instructions on how to mix together the formula which turns into a full fledged production with cast and crew and he’s the star, begging a terrified little dumpster child to just _help him out_.

“Come on, Garbage Baby…”

She refuses the dropper with a terrified knowing. She looks like death washed over, and she's scared of the Predator that holds her, and he wonders if the alarm bells in her head blare red ( _eat you, eat you, Fox, Fox, fatten you up and eat you whole, spit out the bones, eat you, eat you_ ) or if it's pitch and accepting of it. His claw lands on her neck and he guesses the former when instinct is strong enough to leave her crying.

Still, he presses his claw against her face, moving her head to the side, forcing the end of the dropper in when the kit moves to squeak again. Squeezes the end. She goes still. He adds pressure, watching the stuff slide through the tube. He twists her in his hand, helping her latch on.

It’s been a good eleven minutes and seventeen seconds (he knows, he counted them all out to her as obnoxiously as he was able- “you’re wasting my time here. Wanna go back to the dumpster? Do you? Then work for room and board.") but that eighteenth second is key and just like that-

-she sort of figures it out.

“That's it,” he cheers, exhaustion leaving him quietly, dignified. “That's a good trash baby.” She suckles again, her paws reaching for the end. She lets out a little sound, somewhere between a hiccup and a coo, sucking back a glob of milk like a backfiring engine. Her nose is the size of a pinhead, and it wiggles. He pats her head with his claw. She didn’t notice, too involved in her current escapades. Instinct was out the window, pushed off the ledge by a villain in the form of a full belly.

Her legs move. She glares again. _Don't patronize me_.

“You know, you’re using my hustling money here. Which is coming out of your pocket once you’re old enough.” She ignored him, greedily moving her body to follow the dropper.

* * *

She goes through two droppers until her stomach is pushed out like a spinning top and she can't do much in ways of moving, sleepily kicking about in his hand.

He plops her down for a nap, swaddled in the worst diaper job he’s sure any mammal has ever seen, and left her in her crate. Which for a minute he thinks might be a terrible choice on his part.

But she was left in the garbage.

Using that logic, crate is the Ritz, and he doesn't mind so much.

She sleeps, and he microwaves one of his burgers that he totally forgot to put away, so now they’re defrosted all wrong and taste rubbery. He sits on his couch and eats his rubbery burger and a bruised apple, scrolling through his phone for more ways to _not_ kill a child while he has it.

He writes down a few things onto the back of a sales pamphlet he’d tugged off his doorknob.

_Don’t let her sleep on her back_

_Don’t let her put anything into her mouth_

_Don’t let her fall into the bathtub_

_Cover the outlets_ _(with what?)_

He thinks, looking over the already obvious list and adds: _Don’t eat her_ to complete the package.

It seems reasonable.

He thinks that maybe she’ll stay asleep longer and he can at least get a _few_ minutes of work done, looking up new hustles between finding the places with the cheapest baby formula to buy under the table, but apparently she was adverse to the idea of _respecting one's elders_ and before he’d had time for anything, she was already crying again.

“God you’re a _pain_ ,” he told her, holding her to his chest, flipping through the word _Child Abuse_ on his phone and wondering if rocking her just a little too hard counted. Apparently it did. With a grumble he slowed down. “You know that?”

She gives him a pathetic look that says, _didn’t you realize what you were doing?_ and he tells her in no uncertain terms to piss off.

* * *

Day two goes better than day one did.

That is to say, he doesn’t rock her too hard. And he figured out how to at least keep her quiet. Apparently, the pacifier things actually _work_. For a time, at least. Though that time only lasts long enough to give him a reprieve before she’s at it again.

Holding her, it seems, is the only thing that will _shut her up_.

* * *

Day three passes fast enough. As does day four.

Day five, she opens her eyes. He looks over her in her crate that morning, scratching his chest, tugging his boxers up, and there she is. Looking at him. Big brown eyes staring woefully up at the Fox who's got her cornered in a crate. On his floor. Next to the creaky, sputtering radiator.

"Well, look who decided to join us." She blinked. Batted her stupidly large eyes. "You're real dumb lookin', you know that? Which makes sense. Because you were thrown out." _Bat bat bat_. "Sorry. That was mean. But you're a mistake. So I'm allowed to say that."

 _Clean slate_.

He crouched low, and the waistband of his boxers cut into his stomach. "Gonna find you a home real soon," he tells her. "Because some of us need to get back to work. And can't have Garbage Babies getting in the way." _Bat bat bat_. "Then I can kick you to the curb. Which, by the way, is a lot better than a dumpster. Prime real estate." Her nose wiggled. He sighed. "Right. Guess it's time for breakfast then."

 _That_ she understood.

* * *

Day six: a toy shows up in his house.

It's plastic and it lights up and makes noise and he doesn't know where the hell it came from. Until he remembers, oh yeah, he went down to that dumb looking baby store at the other end of town and paid too much money for something that lit up and made noise.

A lot of noise.

 _"Let's count together_!" it sings, before _whirrrring_ towards her on its ruefully light up wheels that blink a rainbow of _screw you's_ to him whenever he trips over it walking to the bathroom or the kitchen. Which happens a lot.

He hates it.

She's utterly enchanted.

So he buys another. And hates that one just as much.

* * *

Day seven he adds another towel to her crate and buys her pajamas with spacemammals on them. They're too big, but she rolls around in them and squeaks, pushing the A-B-C Buddy with her paws, hopping after it with dizzying, wobbly steps that always end her up on her back somehow.

He buys her a second pair on day seven.

And on day eight there's a package in the musty mailboxes he has to key into in the lobby, and Nick is pulling out a package. Bringing it back up.

He lets her have the bubble wrap and dumps the little array of clothes on the floor.

"Hey, look at that," he snarks, snapping the final button on the _I'm a Hustler_ onesie that he couldn't resist adding to the cart. "You don't look like such a complete asshole."

She squeaks.

He bobs her nose with his claw. "Knew you'd like my fashion sense."

* * *

Finnick is reasonably pissed with him.

He knows because when they're out getting beer (and he'd left just a half hour before, dropping a towel over the Garbage Baby in her crate because once he watched a documentary on birds that said it worked) and Nick is dropping a twenty on the table for both of him and Finnick looks at him and says;

"You look like shit."

Which, to be fair, he does. He hasn't been sleeping much. Apparently no one told him that babies, even after being found in the trash, don't like to sleep.

"So do you."

"Yeah. You wanna know why?" He takes a slug of beer, topping it off with a drag from his cigarette. His fingers are burnt. "Because I haven't had a partner for jobs."

"You do fine on your own, Fin-"

"Oh _bull fuck_. You know that ain't true."

"You've always done fine."

"I do _better_ with you." He flicked off the cigarette, and the ashes sizzled against the table. "Ever since that stupid graduation you've been fucked up. What? The rabbit cop get to you?"

"No."

"Then _what_?"

He's not sure how to explain it. Not sure if he _wants_ to explain it. Because really, he can't.

"Personal stuff," he takes a swig from his own beer. It's warm, tepid at best, and it sticks to the roof of his mouth. "That's all."

"That's _all_. I have rent to pay. You have rent to pay!"

"I saved money."

"So, what? You just not gonna work?"

"I will. Just... after-"

"After _what_."

He pushes his beer away and uses the cup to weight down the twenty. It leaves a dark green circle where the condensation _drip drip dripped_ off. "When I take care of my problem. Which should be soon."

Finnick scowls at his cigarette, still burning, still burning him. "You're an ass, Nick Wilde."

And just like before, Nick leaves.

* * *

She's a problem. He has a clean slate and she's a problem and he needs to fix it.

He intends to fix it.

He looks up agencies, watching the kit from her place on the floor, clad in her new pajamas, rolling about, finally getting the hang of how to move blindly across his carpet. Because he reminds himself, over and over, There’s too many to choose from and a new search-

**_[Adoption, giving kits, Prey]_ **

-comes up with a smaller list that he can manage. He clicks on the first one, scrolling past pictures of serene Prey children in blue and pink dresses and suits, and dialing the number catalogued at the bottom. It rings once. Twice. Three ti-

“Hello! Welcome to Open Pastures adoption agency! How may I direct your call today?”

The kit on the floor stops moving. Wiggles towards him. Keens into the air.

His throat goes dry.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

“What? Oh! Oh yeah… sorry… I’m here.”

“Hi there, sir! Is there anything you needed from us today?”

“Yeah, actually. I needed… um… I- I found a _kid_ and-”

“You _found a child_ , sir?”

Garbage Baby rolls onto her back, feet in the air, righting herself as quick as she can to wiggle her nose at him. She lets out a squeak, pushing it out from her tiny, dent of a mouth.

“Yeah…” he breathes. “I did.”

“Okay, sir, well that’s more of a job for the _police_ to handle. Would you like me to direct your call to them?”

Garbage Baby sniffs again. Wobbles forward on four, shaky legs. He stares at the wrinkled mess in large pajamas. Tilting itself up towards him like it’s found what its looking for.

“Sir? Sir are you still-”

“Wrong number. Sorry.”

“Wait! Sir! Are you sure that-”

Nick hangs up.

Isn't sure why he hung up.

Might be going crazy for hanging up.

There’s a mistake brewing thick and sour on the distance, and he can already feel it starting to curdle around him. But at this moment, this precise moment, he doesn’t find it in himself to care. Reaching down he plucks the babe up in his teeth, dropping her soundly into his open paw. She searches his wrist, pressing her nose into his pulse, and he drags his fingers down her back. Leaving his scent along the knobs of her spine.

“You’re a mistake,” he says for the hundredth time, his tongue practiced in the phrase that’s become a second language. “You’re a stupid, ugly, bite me in the ass later mistake, Garbage Baby. And I’ll call that agency back tomorrow. And then that’ll be that. Okay?”

She snuffles his wrist. The walls squint at him again, speculative, calling him out on lies he’s yet to decide on.

“Tomorrow,” he says again (and again and again and again and again and-). “Tomorrow I’ll call.”

But as he’s mixing up formula in the kitchen and helping guide her to the droppers mouth that night, bouncing her back and forth across the room to the beat of a broom hitting staccato bolts against a ceiling below them, watching the sunset amber across the smog collecting against the buildings, and mulling over past mistakes made and paid for. He holds the little rabbit close and hopes that whatever the morning brings, it’ll be something he can commit to without feeling like he’s drowning under an endless sea of _tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrows_.

* * *

He's convinced of Fairy Magic or Hypnosis or simple and pure dumb luck when the small things in his apartment start changing. Growing.

There's a drawer now filled with tiny sets of race car pajamas (she stubbornly refused the likes of Mermaid's and princesses) and his fridge swaps out moldy takeout containers for packages of mashed peas and carrots.

Her teeth had a few weeks before they came in, and he'd already started to eye his crisper like an insatiable mistress begging to be appeased.

For once in two decades, his pawpsicle account was growing a sizable dent.

And Nicholas Piberious Wilde realizes by the third week

(when she’s still there, and he's researching more things, and opening more packages, and he's still not calling, and starting to consider the idea that he might not call at all)

that he is royally _fucked_.

* * *

And then he met Judy Hopps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The police had been at his door.
> 
> The fucking police .
> 
> And God, not just anyone from Zootopia’s finest either. The heartbreaking display of overconfidence and self assurity that had been the rabbit from the park just a few weeks before, and Nick had honestly been hedging his bets on never seeing her again, but now? Now she was glaring at him from the other side of his stoop, fumbling through the ever present cloud of unending shit shows he had to wade through.
> 
> Like they needed another enforcer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We meet Judy, Nick realizes he's in deep, a family is broken, a picture is found, and the end of the beginning of the end begins. 
> 
> Kudos to anyone who can start to see where this story is going. To those who can't...
> 
> Count this as Introduction Chapter Pt. 2
> 
> or: Judy Hopps; ray of ignorant sunshine.

Nicholas Wilde wasn’t sure how he’d gotten into this situation (a lie, really - he knew the exact reason), but in the second feeding time of the day, watching her suckle away at the end of the dropper, he realized that he’d been mindlessly snacking on a bag of carrot sticks.

Which then lead him to wonder _why_ he had carrot sticks.

Which then had him remembering that a few days ago he’d read an academic article about improving and training rabbit kits and their incoming teeth and jaws.

Which then lead him on an emotional trail of breadcrumbs that landed him in front of his open fridge, gaping at teething toys stored to cool besides pre packaged celery and cheese sticks and a weeks supply of said baby’s meals all labeled with scotch table and marker by day, time, amount-

“Oh _fuck_.”

He nearly went into catatonic shock when he opened his computer and found that he’d bookmarked stores with the best prices on baby gates.

“You,” he told the garbage baby, who was happily settling in the crook of his elbow for an after meal nap, “are _actually_ the worst thing that’s happened to me. Ever.” He patted her back, pouring himself a coffee. He used to drink black, but recently he’d been adding mounds of sugar to make up for the lost sleep given to a fussy baby who occupied the southern most corner of his apartment. “And now look at me. I’m buying _carrots_ . Do you know how much _these cost_.”

Which was a fair question. He was sure that he’d gotten them while he was sleepwalking, because they’d just appeared. In between shopping trips.

So maybe not so much a fair question.

Still.

He settles her down on the carpet (because he has one of those now, a little raggedy thing he grabbed out of a sidewalk sale and cleaned until most of the threads went loose - the websites all said that hardwood would be bad for her knees), and pushed one of her toys towards her. Lying down to look at her head on as she squealed and snuffled.

She gave the toy a fierce _push_. It hit him in the nose.

“I could put you back into the trash.” She gave the thing another push, and he was assaulted once more by bright and flashing and cheering ( _let’s sing the alphabet! I can’t hear you!_ ).

"I despise you, GB."

_Sing louder! A-B-C you later! D-E-F- Gee I'm gonna miss you_

"I'm starting to see why you were thrown away."

The machine continued it's song. The people below bang their broom.

It's a beautiful day. And for the first time in a while, he opens his dusty curtains.

(He'll close them fifteen minutes later when the animals across the way decide fuck-all and go carnal, full view. But it was a decent fifteen minutes.)

* * *

Garbage Baby (for that was, until further notice, the title he had chosen) had decided that not only would she take over his kitchen, but she was on a strange mission to effectively ruin every other part of his life. Everything is scheduled around her. Around what she needs, what she doesn’t need. About what she prefers and doesn’t.

Which consequently leads him to finding other things that he does or doesn’t like.

For example, they both found that the apricot applesauce sold in bulk was the most disgusting thing ever sold on the shelves. But chocolate pudding was, without a doubt, the _best_.

(It may have been more his preferences)

(Actually… it was all his preferences)

(It was a strange blessing that she couldn’t talk)

“Chocolate pudding is the best,” he agreed with her, helping spoon another blob into her mouth. She smacked her lips together, and half of it fell out onto his horrible carpet. She slapped at her face, smearing it everywhere. “I know. And wait until you try vanilla. Actually… I’ll add that to the list.” He used the same spoon to take a helping for himself, barely cringing at the ordeal. “And don’t start with me about getting sprinkles.” She sneezed. “Fine. You pulled my leg. I’ll get sprinkles. But don’t complain if I use them all.”

She fell backwards, feet in the air.

“Cool. Glad we’re on the same page.”

* * *

She is the most grossly affectionate thing that Nick had ever met.

He's on the phone with the bank (and has been for too long) settling finances and figuring out how much more he'll need to dip into savings in order to keep himself (and plus one) afloat, when she waddles up to him, open her arms, and free falls against his foot. 

And then she purred. 

"What the hell are you doing!"

"Mr. Wilde?" The woman on the other end tapped her pen. "Is everything alright."

"What? Oh- yeah. Just  _peachy_." He shook his leg, but Garbage Baby held on, crooning. "Just an... infestation. Dealing with that."

"Should I add exterminator to your list of amenities, Mr. Wilde?" She wrote something down. 

"No. I'm taking care of it."

GB rubs her chin across his foot. He wrinkles his muzzle. 

He looked it up on his phone later (in academic journals and free baby books) and apparently rabbits were far more social creatures than foxes ever were. Which would explain the incessant need to _cuddle_.

“Fuck off,” he told her one early morning, sitting on the floor eating potato chips and drinking sour coffee. She’d been trying to climb into his lap for the past ten minutes, her legs flailing this way and that, falling backwards and rolling onto the pudding stained carpet again and again. Each time rocking back onto her chubby limbs and trying it all over again. “You’re not getting this. I don’t _like_ you. You’re a squatter. And B &B rules state, no cuddling the host.”

She didn’t get that memo.

His countless attempts at calling foster care, orphanages and, on one dire day, the police, had all been interrupted by a rolly-polly body squishing it’s way up his shirt or under his knees.

“This is gross…” He plucked her off by her scruff, depositing her a few feet away. She squeaked at him, blinking her squinted eyes before padding back across the floor. She was wearing her outer space onesie, and it left what fur she had static. “You’re _gross_. You know that?”

She squeaked.

“No. Seriously. Garbage Baby. If you do that again-” he grabbed another chip, popping it into his mouth. His fingers were covered with powdered barbeque and he reached over, using her back as a napkin. “Do it again, I’m throwing you down the garbage chute. Scouts honor.”

Which was the wrong thing to say. Because her trials became more arduous and insistent.

By the next day, she was mastering the open mouthed kiss. Which consisted of her stuffing as much of his nose as she could into her mouth when he got too close. And then, when he retreated in horror, giving him a look that told him she was a little too proud of herself.

“You’re _disgusting_.”

He dropped her into her crate that night, wiping drool off his whiskers. “Ugh. How do people _do_ this?” She chirped at him. “Yeah. Play it up. You’re getting tossed out tomorrow.”

But when he went to cover her up, she kissed his wrist. Which left half his hand wet, and his fur smelling endlessly like baby powder and pudding.

* * *

He silently hopes it will always be powder and pudding and open mouth kisses. Until he gets rid of her, naturally. Only until that.

But it's a nice thought.

His world is pillars and concrete and none of them has never been made up of nice thoughts. 

There is an underlying terror in all of what he’s doing. In the choices he’s made. In the progression of events.

He forgets, for a time, how serious everything he’s done is. In their world, he is something to be feared as much as rejected, and this has painted the red target on already red fur, and the scarlet glows ember.

It begins at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. A thunder storm shaking the building was not a new event. He was used to the leaks, the creaks, the crashes and the flashes.

He wasn’t used to how she’d react.

Alone in her corner, his visitor _shrieks_. She sniffles. Cries. Keens again and again for a presence he has no intention of offering. Until at half past the hour, his door is rapped.

“ _Nicholas Wilde!_ ” He’s scrambling out of bed. Had been, long before. Slowly pushing his sleeves into his old, worn robe to collect the child in the milk crate. And then the knocking, the banging, had began, and he was ramming against walls.

“Shhh…” He cradles her while his neighbor screams the hallway down. Someone from below hits the ceiling with their broom. “It’s okay… You have to be _quiet_ . Garbage Baby, you need to be _quiet_.” She weighs barely anything, and he keeps her tight in his elbow, bouncing back and forth. She keens. Squeals. Cries a tearless ensemble. And he:

( _hush, it’s okay, it’s alright, i’m here, i’m still here, **please** , please be quiet?_)

is a part of the second chair.

Nick hides them in the closet. Sits on top of sharp hangers, hushing her. He feels like those old spy books he used to read under the covers when his mother called for lights out. 

 _Where the fuck have you gone, Nick Wilde_ , he sits farther back against the edge behind the coats, watching the lightning tremble bright through the crack of the door. He thinks: he might finally have anxiety. That his mask he'd worked so hard on is cracking, and there's something unwanted oozing through the cracks.

He gives her back a few little slaps with his claws. "Shut _up_!? Do you _want_ to go? Is that it?"

(he'll apologize later - which is a lie - but he'll long wonder why he felt guilty for saying it)

The banging stops when her cries divulge into whimpers. He crawls out of the closet. Sits on his floor, back to his bed. Listening to the thunder continue, roaring above them, snarling.

She keens, soft, soft, soft.

"Hey..." he says, plucking at her tiny ears. "It's okay. Alright? Storms suck."

The night is long. And neither sleep as the storm slams through. So he stays up with her. Taking her to the sliding balcony doors that don’t open anymore because of rust and unstable architecture and holds her to his chest and lets her watch the rain. They move to the bathroom later, the both of them looking at themselves in the mirror. The dropping into the shower pats and pitters. The both of them are silent.

He looks tired. Older.

He remembers police lights.

(He looks like his father,

and doesn't know if it's a good thing.)

She sniffles.

The person in the hall paces back and forth, pausing to shout through the wood about _knowing he’s hiding something_ and _just wait_ and _calling the cops_ -

-and Nick Wilde tries to remember a time since he was young that he was this scared of monsters.

But eventually things begin to calm. Settle.

(breathe)

“You have to be _quiet_ ,” he explains through a sharp toothed yawn. He pours himself weak tea, and warms up milk in a bottle. “If you aren’t then they’ll call the police and… and it isn’t good for Predators, GB.” She snuffles, accepting the bottle with a watery noise. “They don’t like us here. Okay? I know. It’s fucked up. And it’s shit luck. But they’re afraid, I think…”

She slurps her bottle. Her feet kick. She mewls, so he reaches down and snuffles against her ears.

“You’re not afraid of me, right?” Nick flexes his claws in front of her. Carefully, soft, soft, he scrapes his teeth against the pink skin of her head. She rumbles, and greedily adjusts her body to tip the bottle back. “... okay. Good. I’m glad.”

He has an existential conversation with a month old rabbit at two in the morning, drinking tea weak tea (and later, when it isn't enough, eating pudding cups). He turns on the television and the two of them watch old cartoons until she falls asleep against his chest, bottle forgotten.

* * *

The person in the hall, for now, has let them be. And there are no cop lights outside his window. And he holds her as close as he can and pretends like his heart isn’t pounding.

When the clock strikes unreasonable, he takes her with him. “Congratulations,” he murmurs, plopping her against the sheets that definitely are due for a cleaning and smell more musk than detergent. She stays asleep, rolling and getting caught in the mismatched sheets. He snorts, and reaches down to untangle her. “But I’m warning you. If you wet the bed, you’re back in your crate.”

She doesn’t. That night, at least. She chooses instead to burrow under his side, and the two of them weather out the storm.

* * *

He knows that, if there’s any chance of him making it through the next week without a pair of cuffs and a muzzle, he has to get rid of the kid.

Or...

Alternatively…

He read on a website that the best way to manage a crying kit was to determine a place of reflection and a place of rest. And seeing as her place of _rest_ was an old milk crate by a rusted radiator that may or may not have been working (over the last few days he’d begun to wonder if all the noises it made were for show, and had added another blanket to her hutch), there wasn’t much lower she could get as far as _reflection_ could go.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Until, when browsing through the appliance isle of the Targoat down the way looking for a casual array of sundry that he could use in his keep-the-baby-rabbit-i’m-currently-hoarding scheme, he found what he was looking for.

The trash can was a small, desk side thing that was an awful green cross wire monstrosity. But it was on sale.

And the website had said that children needed a place to _reflect_ on their behavior.

Whatever the fuck that meant.

The trash can would go on the opposite side of his bedroom by a pile of ties. And it would be tested that same day. She’d been fussy since that morning, her kidney bean body rolling about, trying to climb the walls with legs that were as stubby as they were useless. “Right,” said Nick, picking her up by the back of her onesie and carrying her across the room. “Why don’t you just go for your _reflection_ time. You little shit.” (Which, in hindsight, was most likely not the thing to say, but beggars couldn’t be choosers).

He plopped her ceremoniously onto the bottom of the trashcan. She blinked up at him. “You’re really ugly.” Nick crouched down, staring at her through the mess of criss crossed wire. “I never knew baby rabbits were so ugly.” She let out a little huff and tapped at the bars. “Sorry. No can do. You’re staying in here until you figure out how to not give me a headache.”

 _But a trashcan?_ her face seemed to scream. _Really?_

“Never think me as anything but poetic, Garbage Baby.” He gestured wildly with his hands. “From whence you came, and all that.”

Whatever its poetic meaning, it worked.

Nick bookmarked the stupid reflection page.

The moment she made a _peep_ , she was being hefted up by the back of her onesie and dropped into the bottom of her trash can. And without fail, tappin curiously at the sides and rolling about the bottom, she finally learned that the only way she was getting out was by shutting the fuck up.

“See,” he tells her, finally lifting her out after she’d batted her spoon away, leaving his floor smeared with orange jello, “there are better ways of being a good squatter than acting like a _pain in my ass_.” She glared at him, but stayed quiet.

There were times, however, when even the trash can wasn’t enough on its own. When the garbage tin now dubbed “the can of shame” (because, as Nick explained, the idea of _reflection_ was stupid and those people could go suck eggs even if their ideas worked) he resorted to new more creative methods. Three of which weren’t so successful (the damp towel did nothing but make her squeal more and the apple slice kept her appeased for about a millisecond and apparently she could rip through the empty paper towel rolls like butter), but the fourth one;

“Open this door, Mr Wilde!”

It’s nearing eleven, and the child was screaming its head off. Again. He was panicking, the pounding at his door growing louder with every moment. He’d rocked her, held her in front of the balcony, offered her bottles, changed her, sang her the least explicit songs on his iPaw, begged and pleaded-

(please)

(be quiet)

(i don’t know why you’re crying)

(i’m scared too… please… please don’t let this be it)

His stroke of genius came when the nearly hairless ball of noise sitting in a trash can in his room let out an unholy _squeak_ and in his desperation he grabbed a spare tube sock he used for mornings when the floors of his less than well heated apartment decided to test his limits with ice cold tile and dumped her inside-

Which, apparently, was the magical fucking answer.

“Are you shitting me,” he hissed into the trash can, watching the sock ball of former rabbit squirm around silently. “ _That’s_ what gets you to shut up!”

“MR. WILDE I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”

“You-” he pointed down at the ball. “Stay. Quiet!”

Which she did. For a whole twenty minutes until the nosy neighbor and her threats finally gave up.

“You…” he breathed, holding up the sock, watching the weight at the end move and swing and squirm. Giving it a poke, watching it swing like a pendulum. “Are more trouble than you’re worth. And you’re worth _shit_.”

She purred.

* * *

Things calm down in their apartment for exactly one and three quarters of a day. He goes out, leaving her in her Trash Can while he peruses the neighborhood and pulls of quick cons for a few easy bucks and strolls up and down over ventilated whole green markets filled with teenagers and soccer moms and bored cashiers. Sneering at prices and telling her over and over again that she's not worth the all organic formula and if she's good enough to be found near a dumpster, then she's good enough to eat bargain brand.

But he still goes.

* * *

She wasn’t technically the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, but he’d always been under the impression that baby rabbits were meant to be _cute_.

By the middle of week three, edging into four, she’d managed to grow only a soft fuzz of fur over her wrinkled bean of a body, and her more pronounced limbs were still no good, so she wiggled everywhere, and if you’d asked Nick on any given day what he was doing, he’d most likely tell you, with complete honesty, that he was keeping track of the goblin that had crawled out from under his bed.

And here he thought that organic and fair trade was meant to do her some good.

“You know,” he’d tell her during mandatory bath time (something she’s made very clear is _not_ her favorite time of the day and results with his fingers being viciously sucked), “maybe if you _tried harder_ you’d grow your fur faster.” She let out an offended sneeze. “But you can’t. Because you’re a lazy squatter who can’t do anything.” She sneezed again, making a valiant attempt to kick him.

Which, to be fair, he let her land. But only to give her some confidence points.

And it, under no circumstances, hurt his hand.

Nope.

Not at all.

But if it did, she definitely spent a good ten minutes in her trash can of shame.

“Little asshole,” Nick said, waving the ache out of his fingers. “You’re actually supposed to be _afraid_ of Foxes. You know that, right?”

She looked at him through the bars of her trash can and sneezed.

“Well, screw you too.”

Eventually she fell asleep in the bottom of her garbage can. And he wandered back to his own bed, stared at the ceiling and reflected about rabbits. And trash cans. And tube socks. And reflecting.

“You little shit,” he said to the trash can through the dark, watching the sock move up and down in sleep. “You’re a little asshole, you know that, Garbage Baby? I save you, and you wake up the entire building.” His arm reached up, bending over to pile over his eyes. “I thought rabbits were supposed to be _quiet_.”

But by then, she was asleep. And would be until the next morning, when in her haste to get out of the tube sock she knocked over her time-out trashcan which resulted in a ten minute dragging eternity of _more_ crying that he couldn't solve because he lost the sock under a pile of ties, which was only stopped when he bribed her with an eyedropper filled with mashed banana.

But overall, as he repeated for the millionth time that morning that the garbage can was going to be staying in the apartment and that as long as she was a temporary visitor (inflection in the _temporary_ , followed by a quick tap to her nose) he would be keeping it. Because either he was brilliant in thinking that he had found the one failsafe way to calming down baby rabbits, or, equally as possible, he had just landed himself with something that he had no fucking clue how to manage.

Except, of course, when he threw her into a tube sock in a garbage can.

Then, apparently, he could manage just fine.

* * *

 Mrs. Turnbuckle closed her door with a dignified _bang_ and moved across the floor to her single armchair. The tea beside it had begun to cool, and she wrinkled her nose, but sipped it anyway. Slurping it back wetly.

She lived alone. Ever since her husband had died (fifteen years before of a stroke, bless the man for all his useless faults) she’d been alone. Unfortunately her former better half (she’d argue that had always been _her_ title) had brought in a great deal of the funds. She’d never been too keen on women taking up jobs, especially if that woman was _her_ , and worked a twice a week volunteer position in the school district and once a week gave tours to mingling bored elders from nursing homes visiting the tenement museums on the west side. But the money had run out quickly, and soon enough she’d been unable to keep their modest uptown apartment-

a shame to see it go, really, balcony, garbage disposal, designated quiet hours and all

-and had needed to move on her own.

She’d relocated to the heavily predator area because of market prices, an apartment complex in Happytown that looked as old as it must have been, and had waved off any pleas from relatives who’d wanted her to leave the place and find a more… settled and _safe_ home. “They need a patrol here,” she’d always answered curtly, fixing her stiff blouse. “And if they are to have someone looking out for the Prey there, it may as well be me.”

Which was why, at one in the morning, turning over in bed and scowling out her window at the storm that was no doubt doing horrors on her air plants, she’d heard a _cry_. And she’d been more than compelled to find out what it was.

It would turn out, her best pink afghan draped over her shoulders, she’d been right to suspect. The fox who lived a few doors down, a very _single_ fox who’d barely spared her a word without the slip of sarcasm, had a crying child in his apartment. At least… she suspected it to be.

But really, that was enough.

She’d banged on the door a few times. Tried to scare the daylights out of him with her promises of justice.

But eventually she’d given up. Which was, apparently, the wrong idea. Because a few nights later there was another surge of cries. And she’d gone back with her promises-

“I’m calling the police!” The door down the hall had opened, and a lion poked his head out. Sneered at her, and then ducked back in. “Nick Wilde!? Do you _hear me_!? I will!”

That time had been false as well. There wasn’t enough evidence. And the precincts (1-23 at least) knew her well by name. By face. Had dealt with her enough times that they had a folder dedicated to her vigilantism. And had lately been stressing the idea that perhaps it would be best for everyone if she didn’t call _quite_ as many times.

But this?

She’d banged on the door again on the third day, and the babe slowed its crying, Mrs. Turnbuckle turning her scowl down at the sound of _hushing_ and _shushing_ until there was nothing but silence and the radio playing the foxes old jazz records, the sound of a needle sliding into place.

There was. There was a _baby_ in that apartment. Beyond the jazz and the hushes and the obvious raise in volume, crooning husky voices and slow trumpets.

She’d been a matron in two different districts across Zootopia, and she knew the sound well. That was a baby. That was a _prey_ baby.

Her first call had gone through and had been sent from department to department until she realized that she was getting nowhere and had hung up after some very choice words for the operator. The second call had been met with laughter.

The third and fourth were no different.

The fourth, however;

“Mrs. Turnbuckle,” the operator sighed. “We’ve told you so many times-”

“And you’ll tell me again!” She had the voice of salted molasses, dripping and granulated, and it slathered the reception. “I need someone to come down here and help me with a problem! There’s a predator-”

“Mrs. Turnbuckle, _please_ -”

She can almost see the operator fingering the _end_ key.

“I have my rights,” she says, bold and fresh, and her breath is all whiskey and coffee beans. “I _know_ how Proof of Relations work-”

“We all do, but-”

“There is a _fox_ ,” she repeated, clearer. The animal on the other side let out a long breath. “And that _fox_ has an _unregistered child_. And you’re just going to let that stand!”

“You cant know the whole story. They might be a relative.”

“They aren’t.”

“Mrs. Turnbuckle-”

“What if he’s harvesting meat? What- what if tomorrow I get a pie on my doorstep and I find out it's filled with deer and elephant and giraffe, huh? And then I’ll call the police and the one person who could have stopped it all was the _operator_ who refused to do their job!”

The operator let out another sigh.

“I will send someone soon,” the promised. “But for now, why don’t you go and… go and see someone? A friend? Family, maybe? Or hey! Go outside! It’s a lovely day-”

“It’s a horrible day. Too much sunlight.”

They groaned. “Uh huh. Sure. Have a nice day, Mrs. Turnbuckle.”

She’d hung up after that, and had made herself a pot of tea. Paced the hallway for a time after, like a single battalion guarding the gates of hell. And when no more sounds were found, she retreated back to sip her cold tea and read the paper.

“Go outside indeed,” she huffed, turning past sports into the Arts, flipping against a few useless advirtisements for declawing. “The _nerve_.”

And then she got up and made more tea.

* * *

Judy Hopps had always been one to collect her blessings and paint her faults yellow. Had always tried her hardest and believed in herself and lived the life she needed to to reach her goals. And for the most part, it had paid off.

She had left the statehood of a life surrounded by rabbits and their dispositions to _make_ something of herself. Namely, to make something of the dream that she’d had since before Judy could remember. She’d worked harder than anyone could have given her credit for, pushed through an endless trail of doubt (that still followed her even as the lines were written in stone- or maybe it was sand) and had finally achieved what no one thought to be possible.

Which then, in turn, proved them right. In the form of a little orange vest.

“Sir,” she’d argued on her first day, standing before the mammoth figure of the chief of the first precinct of Zootopia, “I’m _not_ just some token bunny!”

And he’d barely given her a look over his case file, telling her that, in no uncertain terms, that she _was_.

Two hundred tickets later she’d still been there. Still been an inconsequential part of a whole. And she’d been fighting against that glass ceiling, three weeks later. Staring at the sky through pristine, not a crack in sight.

The vest, she found with some horror, was beginning to fit her far too well.

And that morning is barely any different. She takes her place, watches the chief with a trained eye, works on her very much practiced and much improved glare, and then, when the clock chimes 7:30, she’s being denied manilla in favor of neon. Two hundred turned into three hundred which dwindled back and surged forward depending on the day. And she gave it her all, even when her all consisted of the verbal abuse thrown at her by a slew of unhappy citizens trying to live their days without a fine.

Fine.

 _Fine_.

(I’m _fine_.)

(It’s getting harder and harder to convince herself of it.)

* * *

The workday started off as such:

Parking duty. A slew of insults. Dissociation by ways of size and position. She fills out as many things as she can -

(always as many as she can, and her father, despite it’s sting, would have exclaimed his pride)

\- and tries not to predict her entire life as she fills out ticket after ticket, but she does anyway. And most of it is looking incredibly bleak. Which isn’t something Judy would ever do. Imagining bleak, endless futures is an incredibly _not_ Judy-ish thing to do at all. But at that moment, ticket after ticket, the Judy she used to hold up to standard has been whisked into an oblivion of court appeals and simple goals.

She fills out another ticket for a double parked car. Another for a car thirty four seconds past.

A Pig and it’s mother huff at her, collecting their dues. “Some public service,” the mother mutters, not so very softly.

Judy Hopps had highhandedly become the symbol of bad tidings and tax dollar loathings.

Which may not have been part of her plan to make the world a better place.

Still.

She got up each morning at the same time. Fought with her neighbors over the state of the weather (“cold!” - “hot!” - “shut up!” - “no you shut up!”), crammed an energy bar down for breakfast, and went in with a new and renewed outlook on the world.

A view cleared fresh from rain and dust and sundry that was getting painted thicker the longer she went.

Judy Hopps sat in the front of the bullpen, her hands folded one over the other, and watched the Chief at the front of the room with what could only be called a _concentrated threat_. And when the roll was finished, she slid off her too tall chair and walked across to too big room and stood beneath the too tall Chief, and holding her best posture and glaring her best glare, she’d done her part to argue the position.

“Sir,” she offered, once everyone had gone, and the manila folders long since collected and distributed, their importance none of her current concern. “Sir, I’ve been working here for _three weeks_ , and I’m still not in the system.”

He flicked his glasses higher up onto his nose. “Hmph,” said Bogo.

“And I really think I’m ready for active duty, sir. I caught that weasel last week, remember?” He did remember, by the way his look darkened. Remembered too well. “And I’ve been handing out at least one hundred and fifty tickets every day. I know the streets now. Every one of them. And I think I’d be _great_ partner material!”

“Oh do you now.”

She was under the impression that, despite her can-do attitude, her boss had decided she could _not_ do, and was starting to think those assumptions were more fact than fiction.

“I do,” she affirmed. “I’m good at my job.”

“You’re job hasn’t even begun, Hopps. How do you know.”

“Because, sir, it’s been _three weeks_.”

He lowered his glasses. Pushed them back up. “It has been.”

“And I think I can be a great asset to your team.”

He collected the final manilla folder from the morning podium. “You might be.”

“So-”

“So what, Hopps.”

“So can I have a _case_ sir! Something easy? Something to start me off?”

Bogo patted the folder. Watched her with an unamused amusement that was his default. “Parking duty,” he eased, extending his arm toward the door. “I’ll be the one to decide if you’re partner material, Hopps. Your confidence though is quite the spectacle. Keep it up.”

Hour one ended with her collecting her vest, her walkie, and stepping into the miniature toy car they’d given her with a look of initiation in their eyes.

Days went by, sour and old, and the longer she left her hope out the faster it grew mold.

She hadn’t realized that positivity could spoil.

* * *

 “I apologize, sir.” She stood outside of a townhouse in midtown, holding the ticket out to a horse who’d went two minutes over. “I can’t make any exceptions.”

“I was in there for _five minutes_ .” He was holding a cardboard coffee tray, three of the four slots taken up. He jostled them in his frustration. Foam dripped out. “Come on! That’s _unfair_!”

“Sir, _please_ , I’m just doing my job. If you have any complaints you can take them up with the ZPD.”

He snatched it out of her paw. Coffee dripped over the side. “I will.”

She watched his car sputter down the road. The spot where his coffee had splashed stayed dark. Judy sighed. Collected her things.

Her wallet, as she discovered on her way back to the precinct, had been left on her desk. So her own coffee was out of the equation. She’d ben able to hand out three more tickets in front of the precinct, studiously ignoring Officer McHorn snorting at her from his place outside the door. Mouthing something about _rookie_ and _too many rabbits_ and she turned the key with too much force, the car humming to a halt.

“Hopps.” McHorn nodded down to her, as if he hadn’t been profiling her across a parking lot.

She nodded back (ready to make the world a better place!), pretending the keys weren’t imprinting teeth against her palm.

Three weeks.

The day started as such:

Judy Hopps awoke a different rabbit who came into a city with stars and banners and confetti throws in her blood.

The day would end, presumably, in the same way.

(Ready to make the world a better place?)

(When the world lets me.)

* * *

 

Her parents call her at lunchtime, but she doesn’t pick up. So they call again.

“Mom…” she speaks around her veggie wrap (too much mayo, too little mustard), sitting on the edge of the sidewalk by herself, watching the cars go by. She’d tried twice that week to find a place in the breakroom but both had been awkward and silent affairs that had made her feel more like those old eighties high school dramas that her mother always made her watch at home. The ones with the protagonist sitting alone, lunch tray on her lap, eating a meager and pathetic spectacle in the batrhoom stall. “Hey… I’m at work-”

“Oh, I know, sweetheart. Your father and I were just wondering how the positions going!”

“It’s… going…” A car that no doubt recognized her from the other day - by then she must have ticketed at least an eighth of the city - honked at her as it passed. “Could be better.”

“Well of course it could, dear. But chin up! Maybe you’ll be doing more than ticketing soon!”

“I know you don’t mean hanging up the vest,” she swallowed back mayonnaise, “but I’m gonna pretend you did.”

“Of course, dear.”

“I’m going to. By the way. _Soon_.”

(lie)

“Well of course, sweetheart. Just… don’t rush anything.”

“I’m not! I’m _ready_ for this!”

(truth)

They talk for a time later. She gives up on her mayonnaise sandwich and throws it away before getting back in her cart. Bidding her mother goodbye. Her father makes sure to shout in the background about making the world a safer, more traffic regulated place, and she hung up.

Another person honks. “Hey meter maid! Nice use of my tax dollars!”

Her fingers shake. Her mouth tastes like mayonnaise and ash.

She tilts down her hat before she drives, turning into traffic and doing her best to pretend like her belief is enough to get her through.

* * *

The precinct is bustling by the time she’s back, the air conditioner too cold, even for the rising summer heats, and the tracks of sweat frost over against the shift. She twists her shoulders back, heaving a sigh, waving her hand at a few officers who do little more than scoff. Of course. Like she’d be admitted into the environment as easily as that.

Near the water coolers she can see a few other officers comparing quotas, paws, claws, hooves moving animatedly against the jabs and insults of others, and she can catch one or two little pieces here and there-

Fangmeyer was two thirds done thanks to a speeding sloth heading down Main Street a few days ago (a fact he'd been lording over everyone).

Grizzoli spat out a curse and vowed he'd be at half that day.

In front of the desk, by Clawhauser (who is holding onto whatever happiness he walked in with), two Cheetah’s wring their paws together and say something soft, quick, desperate and scared. Beside them, a line forms. All trivial things, she’s sure. Judy liked the portly Cheetah well enough. He said hello to her every morning, small talking through donuts (a box of them, she sees, currently sits on the desk beside him). Which was more than she could say about the others.

“Judy!”

He waves his hand, catching attention already freely given. “Bogo wants to talk to you. His office. Told him I’d tell you when you got back.”

She nods and pushes forward. “Will do.” Perhaps a promotion. Perhaps her words from the morning had finally split ground. Though it had hardly been a month, and she’d heard rumors of weeks on weeks of trying. But...  with her record- “Any idea what it’s about?”

He shook his head and sprinkles flashed from under his chin, a few of them dropping and bouncing off the counter. “No idea. Best see him soon, though.”

(He isn’t ever kept waiting, goes unsaid. But she can hear it. Anyone could.)

So she nods. She turns.

Their lives move on with the a/c and the donuts and the aimless question after question, prepared in the que behind the desk, and Judy is prepared to continue the mundane-

“Wait! Mrs. Felice you can’t-”

His shout is what catches her first, and she’s turning fast, hand already fixed on her belt, tracing the edges of a fox repellent canister, not sure why or how, but wondering all the same - (danger danger red red red danger) - what would have prepared her for too much time spent scaling walls and braving sands, and finds herself quickly rushed by a Predator, slipping her way across linoleum, breaking through the freezing. Judy steps back. Eyes huge. Heart pounding.

 _Terrified_? Perhaps? She’s not sure.

But really, it’s like a mirror, because when the aggressor stops-

“Officer! Officer, _please_ -”

-so is she.

Clawhauser reached across the desk, sprinkles twinkling on the ends of his fingers. “Mrs. Felice please-” but the Cheetah Judy had seen before, paws still wringing, grabbing the ends of her blouse in two, clawed paws, wasn’t having it. Judy was smaller than her. Her and her husband, who joined her just a moment later. But before them, they seemed to be the ones her shadow swallowed.

Everything in the room swallowed them.

Two, three, four bites. Gone. Gone with the panic.

Life was chewing and swallowing them, and Judy breathed.

“Please,” she was begging again, rummaging in her purse. “Please, you’re an officer, right!”

 _I am a real cop, I am a real cop, I am a real cop-_ “I… I am-”

( _a real cop_ )

“Then maybe you can- oh _god_ , Sam where is it!”

“I have one in my-”

(breathe, breathe, breathe)

“Check your wallet!” He was already at it, throwing aside bills as her purse followed, hitting the floor in a quartet of acoustic symphony. _One-two, one-two, pens scattering, gun wrappers rolling, one-two, one-two_ . She looks up from her place as conductor of the panic. Looks right at Judy. Right through Judy. “ _Please_ , it’s our son!”

“Ma’am, if you can-”

“Our son!” Judy’s request ( _slow down, take a breath, maybe if we, maybe if you, maybe we can_ ) was drowned beneath the tide of a barely suppressed wail. “He’s only _twelve_! And- and we were just at the bank and-”

“The teller.” Her husband was snarling into the folds of his wallet (receipt, reminders, movie ticket, receipt, receipt, breathe, breathe, breathe-). “He asked to see our papers and-”

“They were just in the _car_!”

“Please we need- _shit, Barbera, I don’t have a picture_ -”

And she's patting down her pockets, her eyes spilling over for what Judy knows can't be the first time that day. Checking wherever she can for any sort of proof that they have to show Judy whatever it is they need. The space between the parents is electric, two positive batteries pushing, pushing, pushing, and Judy isn’t sure what to do-

And then Bogo is there. Kept waiting by things that no one expected. He leans across the railing on the second floor, and screams her name. Judy’s ears twitch, but her eyes don’t leave. She’s captivated. Like looking across a forest fire, bucket of water in her hand. Useless power.

“We- we have pictures,” the parents are babbling, and the father has taken out his phone, scrolling until Judy’s sure the screen might crack. “We do! And-”

“And show her the one from _Christmas_ that one’s the best-”

“It’s not recent enough he grew-”

“I don’t care! We need-”

“HOPPS.”  Judy steps back, her hands out. _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I can’t-_

The language is understood, and two sets of eyes are on her. “The teller!” Desperate. Desperate. So desperate. (breathe) “ _Please_! The _bank teller_ -”

“HOPPS!” He had crossed the staircase and had made his way down, and Judy wasn’t sure where to go, who to help.

Citizens. Citizens _always_ come first.

“Um… I- I’m sorry, sir, can you just wait, these people-”

Apparently her sentiment wasn’t met, as her boss, standing beside her, made it _very clear_. “Clawhauser. I thought I requested the presence of Officer Hopps the moment she-”

“I’m sorry sir!” The cheetah was controlling the small crowd of long waiting animals, holding them off as best he could to shout over the desk. “She was just talking to this couple and-”

“You’re the police chief!” The wife breathes (in, in, in, out, in, in in), pressing her life out into the space where it hangs and drifts and threatens to dissipate altogether. “Oh _god_. You- you can help us! Our son-”

“Ma’am.”

“Please! We tried to talk to the bank and they- and then city hall said that-”

“Ma’am _please_.”

Her husband was still looking through photos. “I- we have pictures. If you could ask them to-”

Bogo put his hand out.

The space went still.

“Officer Hopps,” said Bogo, panning down, and she nodded, not sure who to look at. “Can I speak with you. In my office. _Now_.”

“Of course, sir-”

“Wait! Chief! Please-” They’re pushing against the settling, and losing ground. “We know you’re busy but-”

He placates them with little more than a hoof still hovering between the parties. Casual, easy, turning to the couple: “I’m very sorry. We’ll do what I can. But you know-”

“But-”

“You _know_.”

And they do, Judy thinks. They must know.

(because they cripple. they breathe. they drown)

(they know.)

Time and space hung over them, heavy, dense. She’d learned in a sixth grade science class that, if the sun was to burn itself out, then the world they knew would follow behind in a matter of chaotic, destructive minutes.

But she watches it now.

The chaotic destruction is fast. And it is quiet. And it is humble and clean. The two of them, watching her. And it took barely a moment for her to erase what her mind had been chanting - _predator predator predator_ \- to see what they were. What they looked like. What they-

Their eyes were red. Their fur clumped where it had been tugged in panic, in horror, in something akin to the time Judy’s own mother had lost one of her own in birth. Where she’d seen the ever proud matriarch of the Hopps dynasty family cripple under the startling reality of nothing. Something.

Judy swore she saw the Chiefs face twitch. Something odd. Something foreign and unwanted and beyond the casual sympathy he often picked off the floor like dice (Roll and choose and pick an emotion, see where they fall, see where they land, hope it’s enough). She looked back at the couple.

Who looked back at her.

She’d never felt so

(small)

(large)

The wife whispered through those teeth, large enough to snap her in two, “ _please,_ won't you- _please_ ,” and Judy didn’t much think they were strong enough now to even bite back mourning. “The bank teller.” Soft. So soft. “He just… we- we left them in the _car_.”

(( **_helpless_ ** ))

And then Bogo was there. And Clawhauser was calling their names again. And the husband took the wallet, the purse, the mother, and the three of them returned to their positions, guarding themselves before the front desk of the ZPD. As if nothing had happened. As if-

something.

She can hear Clawhauser as she follows Bogo up the steps.  “Officer Fangmeyer can take your statements-” And his voice reaches her ears and her brow ripples from the pressure of a room full to brimming. That the parents have filled the room up with an unnamed sorrow but Clawhauser -

“We just left them in the car…”

“I _know_ , ma’am.” The sorrow expands. Breathes. Lives. “Please, believe me I know but-”

“We need help you can’t just-”

Fangmeyer stepping in, and looking over her shoulder she can see him corralling the two away. Paddling against the heaviness. “I’ll take your statements over there, if you’ll follow me.”

And they do. Heads down, they walk away from the desk and follow the wolf in procession, And Clawhauser watches. The husband supports the wife and the wife supports the husband and they're a high flying act about to lose their footing. And Clawhauser _watches_.

And Judy _watches_.

And watches and watches and-

“Hopps.” She snaps back. Looks up at Bogo, standing and towering before her, the door held open by a tree trunk of an arm. He nods into the room. “ _Now_.”

She gives the front desk another look before ducking into the room.

The grief is left in the hall.

* * *

He sits at his desk, an icon of power, and she sits below on a chair too large for her. It’s a position she’s become used to. Being smaller. Minute. Too miniscule with only a voice to carry her forward. And she uses that voice as Bogo picks up his glasses and a few files, thumbing through them.

“What happened back there?”

He looked over his files. Down his nose. “Say it again, Hopps.”

“The couple,” she gestured, and her ears flicked. “What happened with them.”

“They had an issue.”

“Yes, sir, I know. But I wasn’t really sure how to help them and-”

He huffed, cutting her off. “Not your department, Hopps.”

“Of course, sir, but shouldn’t I be able to-”

“No.”

Some fights weren’t worth the trouble. She nodded. “Okay.” And then: “What department would they go to?”

“Domestic,” Bogo grunted, and didn’t say anything else.

Judy got the strange feeling he didn’t _want_ to say anything else. But she stayed quiet. Her place was in the large chair, and she’d stay there for now, always looking higher, her tail planted below everyone’s line of sight.

He flips through his papers. Turns them over. The clock on the wall grows louder, and Judy does her best to train a stillness that doesn't want to cooperate. The two of them sitting across from one another, existing in the same space for only long enough for one to surpass the other once more.

He finally breathes out, slips his glasses off. Writes a few words down on a bright pink slip. Clears his throat.

“We got a call about a domestic disturbance.” he slides the paper across the table. His handwriting is surgical. “The woman has been an energetic observer for our precinct for years.”

She was fairly sure that that was the first time she’d ever heard _tattletale_ said with such grace.

“You want your first civil case?” he continues, giving the paper a few taps.

“Sir?”

“This isn’t a promotion Hopps. You’re back on parking tomorrow.” His glasses, the ever existing entity of his hooves, settle back into place. “But no one else wants to deal with this, you understand. And, well-”

There’s an insult there, and it rises to the top like fat. She sucks on her teeth. “Sir,” she stars, slow, slow, “I’m a part of this precinct.”

“You are.”

“I’m not just… just some _cog_.”

“Are you actually arguing your first case?”

She was. Which was… unsettling, to say it best. It was a chance to show her boss what, who, how she could be. And she was _arguing it_. Then again,

“Sir. I can handle this,” she took the paper, barely glancing at it. “But I can handle _more_ than this!”

“Oh _can you_?”

“I can.” The paper went into her pocket. “Let me show you. You haven’t actually let me _show you_.”

 He sits back, and his chair complains against the shift. "You do realize that I almost _fired_ you today for insubordination. Standing up to a Chief like that in your third week is ballsy. And stupid." She hadn't realized. At all. She blinks. "And this job? I'm giving it to you because no one else wants it. It's a civil situation. With one of our most frequents. It's a complete pain and we never sent top officers to her cases anymore." His glasses turn a 180 and hit the desk. "And you wont say no."

"Sir..."

“You weren’t my first choice.”

“Sir, my grades-”

“Were superb. Everything about your performance was _superb_. Clinical, even.”

“-Then-”

“You seem to be under the false impression, Hopps, that I’m looking for _superb_.”

She hadn’t been under any false impressions. She’d been under the very strict and factual impression that that was what they were looking for.

Bogo leaned back in his chair. Flipped his glasses in a pinwheel until they hit the inside of his wrist. “You want to prove yourself, Hopps? Then show you can be more than clinical. Your bedside manner needs work.”

“My-”

“You’re a self indulgent martyr with a penchant for positive justice.” The words slip out, and they sting where they land. She gapes. “My best cops solve cases. And they do it with finesse. You have yet to prove either. So solve this,” he pointed to her pocket, “and then parking duty. Tomorrow. And if I see something _extraordinary_ -” and he says the word like his mouth is filled with nails “-then I’ll _consider_ moving you up to a higher position. Until then,” and he points. “Get out.”

Silently. Sliding off the too tall chair, moving across the too large room, away from the too much and the too bright and the too slow.

“Hopps?” She turns again. “Do try not to get fired. No one else fits the vest. And ordering a new one is a hastle.” He’s not looking, his glasses back on his face. "Shut the door on your way out."

She does.

* * *

 Clawhauser is still at the desk when she passes, and she hands her folder up to him with a list of information. He takes it quietly, setting it to the side. “Chief said you can take a squad,” he monotones. “Parked in the lower deck.”

She nods. “Okay.” And then, “Did you help them?”

“Help who.”

“The uh… the parents?” She fiddles. “They lost their kid? What happened? Was it- I know there was an abduction two moths ago but I thought-”

“It’s not that.” Something dark flashed across his face. The monster in the room was back. Filling it wall to wall. “Can't,” nipped Clawhauser. “You want a donut?”

“I’m fine.” She rocked on her heels. “You… couldn’t? But they just lost their kid can’t you just… put out an 920F. Or an AMBER alert or-”

“No.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “I mean… I could help with flyers. Or something-”

“Hopps.” She goes quiet. “We can’t help them.”

“We _can’t_?”

“Right. We _can’t_.” He turns back to his computer, typing in a few quick digits like chicken feed. “I’m putting you in the system. You should be good for a rookie. Pick up your keys downstairs. You’ve got 1435.”

“Okay but…”

The parents went sepia in her head.

“But shouldn’t I just… while I’m out. I can look for him or something. I’m- I’m sure the chief wouldn’t mind.”

The cheetah at the desk continued typing. She watched the sides of his jaw twitch, teeth grinding together. And this was, in her three weeks there, that she’d ever seen Clawhauser look- “We can’t,” he said again. Breathed out through his nose. “We can’t, because it's not illegal.”

“Ben?”

He pushed the box to the side and looked down at his lap. “It happens all the time.” And then, blinking something that might have been hatred back, he mumbles his punctuation: “Take a donut. I'm not hungry.”

(Period. Stop. End.)

Judy takes a strawberry filled because it looked like the only way to finish the cycle, but she can’t eat it. She throws it away down the hall toward the offices.

She goes to pick up her notebook before she leaves, left inside of the cubicle that has yet to be claimed hers. She passes Fangmeyer, who nods at her, fiddling with an unlit cigarette, leaning beside the door. “Hopps,” says the wolf. She nods back. Passes him and walks through to the office space.

Not realizing-

The husband and wife sit on wheeling chairs, facing away from her. But she keeps her eyes on them. Watches them. Waits for them to spring. To snap. To roar about something that she has so little knowledge and demand more of her, alone with them in the small, secluded room.

Waits to feel trapped.

It does not happen.

The two of them sit in silence, looking down at the desk. At a pile of papers left behind. Pens lie vacant by the side, and beside that there’s something colorful and laminated and-

And Judy realizes that they must have finally found the pictures. Their son, if she remembers right. Probably a young cheetah who’d gotten lost or taken in the infamous white vans that her parents had always drilled into them without so much as a single mercy. And she feels a spike of sympathy for the two, and wants to step forward and say something-

(nothing)

The grief inhales-

It’s the wife who moves first, leaning forward in the ancient wheely chairs that they’ve been trying to replace for years but never had the time, the funds. The desk chair creaks. It’s like watching the last dregs of honey from the bottle: she’s dripping off, the husband following, trying to catch her. But he can’t catch the wail. The slew of this and that (anger anger anger fear sorrow anger anger grief I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry i couldn't protect-) and too much and too little twist-tied into a single fermented shout that turns the office into a funeral home and turns Judy into the witness that was never meant to be.

She grabs her pen. Her pad. Lowers her eyes. Moves past them unnoticed.

And she thinks it’s a terrible place: (a terrible, awful, _horrible_ place):

Inside the cubicles of a small office building is not good enough to hold a pair that will shatter. But no place is.

When she slips out, Fangmire has already left, most likely for a smoke. The hallway stands quiet. But through the door, her ears alert, she can still catch the last strings of stuttered air. A morose fairy tale wrapping up in a silver bow.

Once upon a time there was a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, (one, plus two, minus, minus, divide) who forgot to breathe.

So the world did it for them.

* * *

The drive to the address is an odd one. Judy never got much time to see the entirety of the city past the gleaming spectacle of midtown, so traversing the lengths of Happytown is an experience at best. The buildings are painted in old tenement signs and factories that were demolished in the depression stand on the outskirts like crumbling guardians.

There’s an old billboard on the corner of her building.

It’s an advertisement for collars. She stands below, and cranes her neck up, squinting through the smogged sun. Huge letters detailing in long since faded font about voting in to incorporate and fund.

 **_Repress, Reduce, Fight for a Safer Zooto_ ** \- (the rest of it was illegible, and the picture of the smiling lion with the black band around his neck was scratched off and decorated in spray paint; the red, green, yellow dots all slashed and ripped apart).

She locks the car, letting it sit below the smiling lion fighting for safer.

The apartment complex is older, and needs repairs, the ivy crawling up and down starting to stress the bricks. Judy makes her way under a torn awning, hoping she won't have to wait long for their informant to arrive and gather her.

She doesn’t. As it turns out, said informant had been waiting.

“Oh thank _goodness_ you’re here!” From what Judy’s heard the beaver that called is one of their most frequent clientele. Mrs. Turnbuckle of 1955 Cypress Grove Lane was a religious woman of strict resolve and starched collars. She went to church every Sunday, ate the same meals at the same time, and each and every day took a walk down the street that usually resulted in one or two (or four) calls to the ZPD complaining about hoodlums, chompers, noise, or god knows what else.

But she’s a concerned citizen. And no matter the hecklings of her fellow officers, Judy straitened her vent and approached with perfect poise. “Ma’am. I heard you had a domestic issue-”

“Yes, yes! Oh goodness, you know I don’t was afraid no one would come down to see but I told your chief Bugal-”

“Bogo.”

“-that this was a matter of _dire emergency_ !” She keyed them into the building, stepping through the dusty lobby. It smelled like mothballs and lemon disinfectant. “It’s on the fifth floor, _that’s where I live_.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“And I _told_ them. I _told_ them that this was a matter of life and death!” The old elevator down the way was promptly abused by the beaver, who pounded on the up button like a game show buzzer. “Well, maybe not life and death. _But certainly a matter to be overseen by the police_!”

Mrs. Turnbuckle reminded Judy a little too much of her younger self. Steadfast. Head filled with justice and the urge to keep it in its place. “I’ll do what I can, ma’am.”

The elderly woman pinched Judy’s elbow. “Such a _nice_ young girl. They usually send around one of them Wolves or Rhino’s you got. _Pah_ . I always say-” the elevator arrived with a _ding_ and the two of them stepped in, Turnbuckle going back to her steady routine of heartily assaulting the buttons inside, “that the _best jobs_ can be dealt with animals like us. Who _understand_.”

She prattled on until the doors slid open once more, pulling Judy out by her elbow onto the fifth floor. “-and of course, as soon as I heard the noises, you _know_ I had to call. Who wouldn’t have! Except for that slimy Elvira in 5F, but she’s never been up to any good.”

She's dragged down a carpet, past tilted and skewed and long since stripped. The place looks desolate, and the color schemes were something picked out before her time. There are pictures on the walls, and all of them look like the ones hotels hung in rooms for an artistic appeal.

The door is a broken one (as are most of the doors in the hall), white paint long peeling and termite eaten, and the numbers were only the shadow of brass plates that used to take up residence against water eaten pine. The beaver shuffled behind her. She turned back her shoulders, trained her face, and rapped her knuckles against the wood.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. But when the hiss of bolts and chains finally ceased and the door was swung open, she could at least say with perfect certainty that she did _not_ expect that.

“So, Mrs. Turnbuckle, finally called the cops on me, did you?”

Judy pauses. Stutters. Stares.  

Fox.

 _Fox_.

Judy’s breath catches and locks into its (sly, trickster, thief, eat you up, spit out the bones, fox fox, red red, _I want you to remember this moment for the rest of your life_ -)

The Fox before her leaned forward, teeth flashing in the broken hallway light. “Never thought I’d see the day-”

“You had this coming, Nicholas! Living here without so much as a courtesy to the rest of us!”

“Some of us can’t all be rays of sunshine like you, Ma’am.”

“You see! You see why I called!” The beaver gave Judy’s arm an amicable slap, pointing at the Fox, boredly leaning on his stoop. “He thinks he can just march in here and take over our building!”

“Oh no. You’ve discovered my evil plot to interrupt book club. What ever shall I do!”

“And now- now I hear him _farming meat_ !” That got her a snort. “And when I _politely_ requested-”

“-brought a baseball bat with you to the door.”

She ignored him, tugging on Judy’s sleeve. “He refused to show me his papers! He _has a baby in there_ . A baby _prey_ . I worked in the district, Officer, I _know_ my cries.”

The Fox tilted his head up and scratched his neck. “I’m not showing you any papers.”

“He’s not showing them because he’s-”

“ _I’m not showing them_ because, as you can see, there’s no _reason_ to.” He spread his arms wide. “Unless of course you'd like to pat me down. Must be hiding a kid somewhere on me, right?”

The two of them squabbled for a time longer, falling into a routine that was as age old as the walls. Fingers pointing, smug smiles placating, slurs fired towards Predators and easy dodges by the one that they were meant to harm. And at some point, between the declaration of just why Foxes were red (“because the devil made them, along with all the rest of you chomping lot”) and the snorting down of a badly concealed scoff (“really Mrs. Turnbuckle, you truly are a _wonder_ , aren’t you?”) the two neighbors seemed to notice that the middle player in their ongoing game of Offensive Monkey in the Middle wasn’t responding.

“Officer.” The beaver flicked her elbow, standing taller. “Officer, I called you for a _reason_ . Not to gape. Really, I thought the ZPD hired _professionals_.”

“Um-” said Judy.

“Now would you kindly assist me in a citizen's arrest because I know that you don’t have papers, Nicholas, and so help me you’ll leave this apartment in handcuffs.”

“Your fantasies are _charming_ , Mrs. Turnbuckle.”

“They should’ve never disbanded that collar idea of there’s,” the elder woman preached, setting her own starched collar strait. “Would’ve done us all a good deal of help when we find our neighbors collecting their next meals.”

His sneer flicked into a scowl, eyes shifting back to the rabbit in the middle of it all. “Can your little friend here do something? I have things to do and places to be and she’s not helping with any of that.”

“Why you insubordinate little-”

Judy blinked. She blinked again.

There were not many things these days that she allowed to frighten her. _The only thing we have to fear is fear itself_ , was the final parting words of a daughter to her father at the train station, and he’d parried it away with a laundry list of other innocuous things that he believed could be listed under that statement.

She'd tried to reason with him. And, in some shameful delirium, tried to reason with herself.

Some things still scared her.

Some things still sent her flexing her paws to ward away the dampness building between her fingers and breathing through a heart that never would settle. That she could so clearly remember the moment before, the moments after, the moments of- when claws had been sharp and she’d been a canvas and her life was painted _red, red, red_ -

He was red.

He-

(This fox.

The other fox.

Gideon.)

Her thoughts are not merciful ones, and the pain that slices is all too permanent, and she has the repetitious urge to touch the place she knows her scars are well hidden until the right light hits. And right now her brain is screaming a symphony of old summertime teachings under the apple trees where her grandfather had coaxed her into repeating back the rules while her mother fussed over peeling plaster on the left side of her face. (“ _Remember Judith. You musn’t ever go near a Fox alone. They hurt us, you know. Natural enemies. That’s how it’s been. That’s how it’ll always be_ .” - _“Pop pop’s right, sweetheart. You can’t really trust foxes. You and your siblings have to remember that, alright? Promise mama you’ll remember that_.”) and she’s remembering promises that she’d made to protect and serve and the dual nature of a lifestyle focused around trusting and not trusting and remembering the rules like a picture perfect countryside fairy tale-

_We stop at the light, at the sign, at the fox, because they’re red. Because we’re safe. Because we’re rabbits and that’s what we need to do._

And the fox before her, standing smug and slouched and all too red (red like the devil and the light and the sign) is something she thought she’d never have to encounter again.

“Hey. Cutie. You wanna charge me or what?”

She straightens and pushes her anxieties behind, where they murmur and bubble. “Don’t call me cute,” she says, all fire and determination (artificial at best, but barely sweet). “I was called here because of complaints from your neighbors.” From her left, the beaver puffs. “Several complaints actually. About a child. Which would be…” she took out the paper Bogo had given her and scanned it, “it would be unregistered.”

“It would be,” he agreed. “If I had one.”

“Which he _does_!”

“Mrs. Turbuckle, please. Sir.” She wasn’t sure when, but somewhere between point A and B, she found her voice, and it traveled up the path of a ramrod spine and burst forth, traveling along with the easy message _I am a real cop, I am a real cop_ \- “I was called here on domestic disturbance and-”

“Wait. You were called on _domestic disturbance_ . Without actual _proof_ . Of the _domestic_.” He cackled. "You do know the stories about her, right? _Naggy Aggy_? Always finding something new that doesn't exist."

“Well... no. But that’s not-”

“There was a _baby crying_ !” Agnes Turnbuckle took the bait before it could be teased and jumped forward, pointing a shaking finger. “I _heard_ it officer. Through the door, I _heard_ it.”

“And I’m trying to explain to dear old Agnes here that she’s _mistaken_ . And I don’t have any papers. Because I don’t have a _kid_ .” He faced Judy once again. “And trust me when I say, I’d _never_ have one. Because they’re disgusting and tiny and stupid, and can’t do shit for themselves.” He tapped his foot. Smiled. “Really, could you see _me_ settling down and popping out a few with the Mrs?”

(No.)

(But that wasn't the point.)

Anger ran hot, and she wasn’t sure just who it was for. Her nose wiggled, and she tightened her fists. “Sir. I’m going to need to see _papers_ . Your neighbor heard a child which means that there _must be something_ in there! And I demand you let me in so I can _check_!”

“Oh you _demand_ , rookie?”

“Yes. I _do_.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Sir, I’m asking _nicely_.”

“This is nice? Lucky me.”

“Papers, sir.” And then, in a voice that echoed a nine year old child hungry for dreams, she stood tall and let loose with a valiant, “it’s the _law_ , sir.”

She feels rather proud of herself, really. Handling the situation amicably enough. Braving her worst fears in a dim hallway or a terrible building topped with smiling lions and old ivy. Finally trying out her best cop voice (courtesy of too many hours spent watching police dramas after lights out in her room). And she thinks, this is the moment that Bogo sees what I am.

And then that Fox had to go and ruin everything.

He sneers. Snickers. Clicks his claws and unhinges his jaw. “Okay Officer Fluff. Here’s the _deal_. You wanna see papers. Fine. You can see all the papers you want. But as a private citizen-”

“You know the laws, _chomper!_ ” The beaver careened forward, and her feet slapped the floors with enough force to send a few silverfish running into the outlets. “Any citizen can ask a Pred for their papers. That’s how Proof of Relations _work_.”

“And while that is a _charming_ notion, I’m still in the vicinity of my own house. And like I explained to you _over and over_ , there’s no baby in here that’s _mine_. You’re just harassing a citizen. What d’ya think about that, Fluff?”

“I would never-”

“And yet,” he spread his arms, “here we are. Acting all big and powerful in your cute little blue uniform. What? No vest today.”

“How could you possibly-”

"I know _everyone_ in this city, Fluff. From the dreamers that make it, to... _you_." She scoffs, puttering back just enough to taste the offense. He continues, crossing his arms. “Like I said. I’m a private citizen. And you're a know it all with too big dreams to fit that itsy bitsy little body. And an officer wearing a cute little vest like that, playing dress up and acting like a _big girl_ all by herself can’t do _shit_.” Between the beavers gasped cries of indignity and Judy's own impressive jaw drop, the Fox turned back to the rabbit in hand. “You wanna play cop? Fine. Play cop all you want. But until you get yourself a warrant, you’re not getting anything.”

“Wait! You can’t just-”

“Toodles, Officer Carrots! But please, by all means, come again. It’ll be so lovely to see where they put you next.” He looked her up and down, and his smile spread, sick, sweet, stretchy. “Maybe next time you come by you’ll be on crossroad duty. And wouldn't that be _exciting_.”

“Hey! Don’t you dare think that you can just-”

Whatever she was about to say was cut off with the door slamming closed. And she stood there, next to Mrs. Turnbuckle, listening to the retreating _tip tap tip tap_ of his claws across the apartment floor.

The paper crumples in her hand. The ink stains her fur.

She can hear Bogo’s voice against the grain - _Parking duty._

“Next time.” The elder woman gave her arm a squeeze, awakening her long enough to step back from the Foxes door. “Don’t worry, dearie. We’ll get him _next time_.”

“... yeah. Okay.”

“Until then,” and she tapped the side of her nose, moving backwards towards her own apartment, “I’ll keep a good lookout. Don’t worry. No fox is gonna hurt a baby on my watch. I know what I heard. And I know that I heard a _baby_. A prey baby. And I ain’t gonna rest. Not ‘till we collar the like of ‘em.”

“Right.”

The elderly animal left with a few more promises about olden days and the joys of filterless conversation and interpretation, returning to her own apartment where the rabbit officer could still hear her muttering to herself even after the door had closed. And Judy was left alone in the hall.

And that’s all.

* * *

He takes a swig straight from the bottle and hisses through the burn.

Too close. It had been too close. Without thunder or lightning or terror of much anything, he had come closest to recreating some new fear that was beginning to layer thick in his mind. He had too many memories, as a kid. Too many of police lights, of screaming and crying, and all of them left a taste like burnt rubber on the top of his mouth.

He tries to open his balcony door, but it’s stuck, like always. He leans his face against it and stares at the billboard he can just see from his window. The lion smiles.

Something bumps against his ankles and he looks down. GB apparently had sensed his distress and decided that his legs needed kisses. She opened her jaw as far as it could go and whacked her open mouth onto his fur. She leaned back and grinned. “Yeah… thanks Garbage Baby.” She chirped. He reached down and picked her up by the scruff of her Jungle Pananza onesie. It was covered in something red and sticky. He grimaced. “What? Do you think this is too much of a problem? I can handle this, right?”

She pat his nose. Her ears are still too small to do much, but they twitch against her head and her too large feet hit space.

“I didn’t think so either.”

He took another swig. She tilted her head.

“Here you go.” he let’s a drop fall between her ears and she squeaks, pawing at it, offended. _Why would you do that?_ “Sorry sweetheart. You were in the way.” She squeaked again. “Little shit. You know, you’re giving me more trouble than you’re worth. You know that?”

Apparently she doesn’t, because she’d taken to ignoring him in favor of fussing until he puts her down, chasing a lone ant who'd been unlucky enough to try to find its next meal around the floor, looking little more than a clumsy, pudgy hunter after its prey. He snorted back a comment and instead took another long drink.

The police had been at his door.

The fucking _police_.

And God, not just anyone from Zootopia’s finest either. The heartbreaking display of overconfidence and self assurity that had been the rabbit from the park just a few weeks before, and Nick had honestly been hedging his bets on never seeing her again, but now? Now she was glaring at him from the other side of his stoop, fumbling through the ever present cloud of unending shit shows he had to wade through.

Like they needed another enforcer.

He'd seen her, of course. In his own little solo schemes. The depressed Bunny who took her job and her vest too seriously while trying to move up in the ranks. Even though she couldn't reach the first rung. He knew her. Had watched her like a daytime special that had no part of his life.

And now...

The Garbage Baby had stopped chasing its new friend, who ran in the other direction quick as you'd like, and was looking up at him, concern beading against it’s wrinkled face. Her fur is finally growing in, though, as he’s reminded her every hour on the hour, she still looks like an ugly sack of bones. Wrinkled and patched. The rodent infestation of his apartment.

Actually- “You look ugly,” he told her, the hour striking back into normalcy once he settled the bottle between the couch cushions and joined her on the floor, a clawed hand reaching out to tip her over where she squealed and rolled, flailing on her back, tiny fat limbs useless. “You’re my ugly ass mistake, you know that, Garbage Baby?”

She stopped struggling to tilt her head back and glare.

“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”

 _Clean slate, clean slate, Nicholas Wilde you are free of guilt and insulting her will do nothing to your perfect record because you saved her and you have a clean fucking slate_.

She tried once more to get up, and with a snort he tipped her back.

In hindsight, not really the attitude of a Fox with a newly formed solid gold disposition, but he's always been made to tarnish.

* * *

The ride back to the precinct was illuminating at best, and gave her some time to think. Warrants weren’t that hard to come by. Not that they gave them out like candy, but if she had probable cause then perhaps-

The turn signal stays on the entire way. The _tink tink tink_ just another part of another gapless string of thoughts.

She parks the car and takes the elevator up.

Clawhauser it seemed was over his apparent hunger strike and was in the middle of donut number six when she approached the desk.

“Do we have any files on Nicholas Wilde.”

“What?” He leans over. A blue sprinkle falls at her feet and she kicks it, watching it roll under.

“I need files.” She checked her notebook again. “On a Fox. Nick- Nicholas Wilde?”

He swallowed, looking over and down at her, and the smile that spun sugar candy sweet was a sympathetic one. “Aw, geez, Judy. I’d loved to, really. But you’re not in the _system_ yet. Gotta get past the first rung, you know?”

“Bogo assigned me this.” Which wasn’t technically untrue. Still, she pressed “You can ask him,” when the Cheetah raised a brow. “It’s a domestic disturbance case. Mrs. Turnbuckle-”

A look of solidarity appeared as fast as the others had gone, and he was leaning his elbows against fallen sprinkles, eyes towards heaven, his sigh a low, deep, dramatic one. “ _Oh_ you’re working with _her_.” He snorted. “Yeah. Good luck. No one’s been able to stand the woman. You heard what we call her, right?”

“Naggy Aggy. I know. One of the residents-" Judy shakes her head. "She seems perfectly lovely. A little high strung but-”

“A _little_!?”

Judy didn't mention that the woman had reminded her of herself. She was new to Precinct 1. Making friends was actually something she'd _like_ to do. “The animal we talked to wasn't complying. So I was going to ask about a warrant -”

Clawhauser hissed a breath back into his throat like a tire pump. “Ooh. Yeah. Don't know if you can get one of those.”

“But files?”

He let out another sigh, less breathy, but no less dramatic. Then again, everything about Clawhauser was dramatic. He devoured glitter and walked through love songs. “I can give it a try. You can always ask the chief but…”

“Yeah…”

He crossed his heart. “Tomorrow, okay? I’ll see what I can do.”

She thanks him. Agrees. Drops off her keys and her quota.

On her way out she realizes that her notebook is still in hand. The office spaces aren’t far off, and she wouldn’t need it until tomorrow. Better keep it safe in a drawer than risk it getting dropped or stampeded on her long trip home. It was perilous enough on her own. She didn’t need her evidence put in the same jeopardy.

She pokes her head in. Sees no one. Slips past the heavy door into the space. The cleaners hadn’t been through yet and there are wrappers hanging about against the carpet, a few loose coffee stains and styrofoam rolling about with the floor vents.

A few cubicles over she could see the top of McHorns head, shadowed a black and white movie under his desk lamp. He noticed her, snorting, and then goes back to typing when she raised her hand.

The place the cheetahs had taken up was long abandoned. But their presence sticks like schoolhouse glue, peeling and pruning fingers.

Judy can see where the mother had fallen- stained by a toppled desk chair no one had bothered to right. There’s a smell of soap that Judy didn’t recognize. Shampoo and cleaner and a musky perfume. A stillborn grief floats with it, collecting and keeping.

_Breathe in_

( _We left them in the car_ )

_Breathe out_

( _help us help us help us_ )

She finds the picture as she’s walking away from the weight - feeling something slip beneath her paw. It’s partially trapped under the cubicle wall. A shiny little thing that she reaches down for, pulling out and flipping this way and that. “McHorn did you lose-” He snorts.

She turns it over. Flips it over again.

It’s a standard 4x6, decorated on the back with a corner pharmacy watermark. Something older by a few years, at least. And the half moon stains were tales of badly placed coffee mugs and cereal bowls topped over, leaving the ink a green, sickly tint. The subject of green and sickly was flashing a smile at the camera, glasses reflecting the sun.

He was a foal.

A little deer out of his spots for a few years (and proud of it, if the way he’d turned his body was any indication - she’d known enough of his kind to know just how momentous the occasion was), but still a child. Still young enough to need training wheels and prefer plastic over glass and read books with only pictures and beam at the camera as if the neon floaties he wore were a badge of pride. It was taken at a boardwalk, and Judy think she might have passed it by before. Down past the Sahara. A little public beach known for its merry go rounds and haunted walking tours.

He sits on a driftwood bench in his floaties, the sea behind him. Ice cream cone dripping in hand. And the rabbit in the picture thinks that if her hearing were better than it already was, she could hear the parents doing their best to stifle laughter.

There were a few deer on the force. But she wasn’t sure which had kids. She wasn't sure of anyone yet, really. Still, they might be looking for their picture later.

“You’re a great asset to this team, Judith,” she tells herself, moving her way past cubicles and stacks of reports. “You’re great, because you do your job and you help your teammates find family pictures-”

“Hey. Meter Maid. Mind being quiet for two seconds.”

“Sorry, McHorn.”

All she gets in reply is another snort.

Judy tucks the picture away in her notebook, and then settles both to rest at the bottom of an empty drawer that she plans on filling with future cases and packed lunches and sticks of gum, just like every other cop here. More than any other cop here.

 _Better_.

(I am a real cop)

From behind her, the rhino stood up. Turned off his computer. His desk lamp clicked and the shadows grew.

* * *

She follows shortly after.

What’s left is forgotten, besides pictures and names.

* * *

Clauwhauser’s promised tomorrow, as it seems, would turn into a lot earlier than that. When at 11 p.m., tucked into bed and listening to the bickering of neighbors next door, she’d gotten an email with no subject from a sender she’d never seen.

_Judy,_

_Pulled a few strings. Turns out, he has no record. Public information act deemed it fit to release. Small file, sorry. I scanned everything for you. Pick up physical tmrw._

_-B. Clawhauser_

It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. And as she flicked through every picture, going back and forth, comparing, contrasting, deciding, designing, pouring over and out, spilling and gutting, she began to do her best to piece together the anomaly of a Fox that was Nicholas Wilde. An animal who lived a life of scrutiny by nosy neighbors, yet harbored barely a scratch or scar to prove the war. Confident in his _joie de vivre_ , and smarmy in his too loud smiles.

“Come on…” she whispered, “give me _something_.”

Something, as it turned out, would come in the form of Nothing.

Nothing, that was quite possibly, a _something_.

A tidy record can only be so neat and clean when enough zeros have been accumulated. And Nick Wilde was a Fox who accumulated nothing like it was a bad case of hoarding.

“Got you.” She emailed Clawhauser back her thanks and asked him to set those aside for her first thing. She’d be picking them up early.

 _And_ , she wrote _, tell Bogo I’ll be needing a paperwork file of my own. And a name in the system.  
_

She put her phone aside.

She slept.

* * *

“You’re a fucker, you know that?” It’s his greeting words when he approaches the van, Finnick jumping out to tilt his head back and glare. He's pissed. And he has every right to be. 

A month ago, Nick called him about a thing he's needed to take care of, thinking that that thing would last only as long as his patience did. That he'd be back to the same routine in no time. 

And then something changed. 

He's still not sure what it is.

But that morning, realizing that his escapes were costing him (carrot sticks and pudding cups and shampoo and baby gates and God knows what else) he'd called Finnick. 

Who cursed him out for a good seven minutes before agreeing to meet. 

He said yes, though.

"I'll be back later," he promises GB, plopping her into her crate. He'd moved it into his room while he was out, figuring that if she started to cry, no one would hear her as quickly as if she was in the sitting room. And if someone did happen to come in, it would be that much harder to find her. She squeaked, turning a circle and watching him from over the rim. He ticked his nails against the side, going through the checklist in his head.

She'd been fed her morning meal already, and he left an apple slice beside her, which should hold her until after lunch when he'd be back. She had a fresh diaper, one of her teething toys just out of the fridge and he'd washed her blanket. He scratched between her ears, searching for his keys under a stack of old towels and finding them moments later on his dresser. "Be good, alright? Try not to tear up anything." She squeaked. "Don't test me. Anything you break, you buy. And your in a hell of a lot of debt as it is. I'm still counting my CD rack as damaged goods."

(Because just days before, a wrong turn with a toy had sent his beloved collection toppling across the floor which had resulted in an extended time out and a lot of new, interesting words.)

"I'll be back," he promised, sliding the crate under his bed next to a pile of dirty underwear. "Just... stay here."

She squeaked again.

He left. Hesitated, paw over the knob.

Maybe... maybe it would be best if he _stayed_ -

 _You need the money_ , his brain reasoned. _Nicholas Wilde, you need the money. And you're not going to make any sitting at home with a baby rabbit_.

He locked his door, and wandered out.

Finnick was waiting for him in front of his apartment, an empty pack of cigerettes in hand, flipping the top back and forth. "You're such a _fucker_ ," he repeated. _Flip flip flip flip_.

“Well hello to you too.”

“It’s been _three weeks_ , Nick.”

“And you’ve been doing fine.” He leaned on the van, ignoring the way it creaked. Metal, just warmed by a fresh sun, burnt under his fur. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve been great.”

“Yeah, well ya heard wrong. It’s been shit.”

“Glad I’m needed.”

The fenneck snorts something sharp and sour, slapping the back of the van. “Just get in, will ya? We’ve got rounds to make.”

Nick climbs in. Sitting in the front, going through their plans. It all feels normal, like he’s falling back into something and taking up running where he’d left off. They discuss strategy between Finnick chewing on an old cigarette, igniting a dead lighter and smelling the oil burn.

“We’re gonna need twice as many,” Finn pulls over at the corner near an alleyway, turning in and taking up the space. The garbage cans in front of them make Nick’s ears twitch. “Two pops, I’m thinking. Can work with that.”

“I think I’ve done worse.”

“Like fuck you have.” The elephant suit in the back is fresh washed, but hadn’t been given the space to dry, and it still smells like mildew. Finnick slips into it, tugging at the hood. The larger of the two adjusts his tie. “Two pops, Nick.”

“Two. Fine. Twice as many. Might be a long night though.” He scratches his chin and looks at the garbage. “Also… might need to take a fifteen minute break in between-”

“ _Why_?”

“Because,” a shrug. He unbuckled. “We don’t all have the luxury of good apartments.” (And because feeding time happened at promptly 2 p.m. on the dot or else his newest strange member got fussy and nippy and tended to try and escape her confines. But he wasn't sure if that was what Finnick wanted to hear.)

“My apartment’s shit.”

“Yeah, well mine just got a new problem. Have to take care of it.”

Finnick doesn’t ask why. But he doesn’t get the chance. Because it’s in front of the large ice cream store, just opened, a mull of customers lurking inside, that the Bunny of hopes and dreams and perpetually good tidings cuts them off.

She's standing there, waiting for them, a squad car parked just a few feet away. She leans on the window, watching them approach. "I've been watching your routes on the street cameras," she explains, and he must have looked horrified enough that she felt the need to point that out, gesturing up at the traffic cams dotting every corner. "You're really hard to find, you know that?"

Finn gives his hand a squeeze. "... Nick?"

"Shh." He squeezes Finn's hand back, too hard. "Carrots. This really isn't the time. Your detective skills are great. Kudos. You're a regular Nancy Shrew, but-"

"Don't call me Carrots." (He writes down that name as _always use_ and flashes his teeth at her). "You and I need to talk."

"No. We don't."

"Yes," she repeats. "We _do_. Unless you'd rather go in there first and wait for me to arrest you on the way out? Because I can. But I'd rather you saved your money." Her eyes drift to the smaller Fox. “I’m guessing this _isn’t_ the nonexistent child your neighbor heard.”

“Fuck off, sweetheart.”

“Didn’t think so.”

She wears her confidence better than she wore the vest, which, Nick notices, she is without. Badge freshly polished, resignation long since passed, she stands tall and renewed, her toes bouncing a tune against the cracked walkway. In her arm is a red folder, and she brandishes it with a flourish. The door of the shop behind her opens, a family leaving, popsicles in their hands.  “I think you need to come with me.”

Nick Wilde blinks.

Blinks again.

And then

(remembering graduations and pride and voices too big for bodies)

he laughs.

Really, was there anything else he could have done. _No_ , he chuckles, _no_ _there was not_.  

“Like hell if I do! Like I said before, Carrots. Private citizen. I'm protected by enough laws to slap you with a hefty harassment charge. If you want me to refresh your memory, I can. Just say the word. _After_ I'm done here.”

“Why not do it now and save me the trouble.”

He snorts. “Look. There’s time for that later. Some of us have _real_ work to do. And, for the record, what I'm doing? None of it's illegal. I have my papers in order-"

“Which of those papers includes scamming people.” She looks back to her folder. “For… twenty years, actually? Wow. That _is_ impressive.”

“Hey, it’s not scamming. It’s a small business.” She cocks her brow. “And in case you wanted to know, Carrots, two hundred bucks a day doesn’t complain half as much as you do.” He pushes past her, dragging the smaller along. She cuts him off, bouncing ahead, and he wonders if it’s possible to encompass the sun- shine and burns and all.

“Actually, it does.” She opens the folder. “You and I are gonna take a trip to _your apartment_.”

“I told you to get a warrant-”

“Which I couldn’t do.”

“Well. There you go. And that means that you’re not doing shit. Have a great day.” But his next attempt at pushing past is put on hold by a paper being shoved against his shirt. His tie wrinkles.

“Don’t bother throwing it away. I’ve got loads more copies.”

His nose follows his tie, crinkling.

“Recognize these?” She gives them a tap. “ _These_ are your tax forms.”

“So.”

“So, unfortunately for you, I’m a _very_ quick little bunny. And it didn’t take long to see something wrong with them.” Another tap. “Lying on a federal form, Nick Wilde? And here I thought you were above all that.”

Oh.

 _Oh_ …

Oh _shit_.

Finnick is already gone, slipping his hand out of Nick’s and yelling something back about rescheduling his weekly cigarette run. The engine in the alleyway stirs to life. _Traitor_ , Nick seethes, fiddling with the form that was to be his downfall. _Traitors, the lot of you_. The van backs out, and Finnick flips him off out the window.

She taps her foot. "Mr. Wilde-"

“How… how in the hell-”

“You’re holding a three year jail sentence _at least_ .” The empty folder waves back and forth, and she smiles beneath it like an Egyptian goddess. “And I’m willing to make a _deal_.”

“I don’t _make_ deals.”

She says, “three years,” again, and he flinches. “I’m willing to look past that. All of _this_. If you just give me information.”

“Information on my nonexistent problem.”

“ _Yes_.”

“That’s dumb.” He glares. “ _Why_ ”?

“Because I have paperwork to fill out, and you’re keeping me from doing that.”

His glare condenses. “Are you using me to _secure your job_.”

“I might be.”

“That’s _low_.”

“Yeah, well, it complains less than you do.” She smiles wide when the comment slices. “Three years, Nick. Or… you know… just an eensy look at your apartment…” She waves the folder again, the goddess returning to her pedestal. “Your choice.”

She had gumption, at least. And he watches her waving her folder (back, forth, back, forth), painting her face with smug like a teenage girl not sure how makeup worked yet.

He sits in the front beside her. The radio stays on, flashing alerts that she scowls and scoffs at, mumbling little sounds that all translate to, _just you wait_. They park beneath the smiling lion, stepping into the bronze heat of a quickly unfolding afternoon. “Just a warning,” he sneers, careful where he steps around broken glass and forgotten rust. “You might come away with a whole lotta nothing.”

“You’re my first civil complaint.” She follows his same steps, grimacing at the spilled cans of beer on the path. “I’m going to find _something_. And even if I don't, it counts.”

The ride in the elevator is tense, the walk down his hall matching that in spades. From Mrs. Turnbuckle’s room, Judy can hear an afternoon sermon on her television.

_-the Predator shall take his rightful place… We are a city of… danger and prosperity are found where tooth and claw…_

“You coming, Officer?” He’s opened the door, and she seeks out the entrance between peeled wallpaper, past the Fox who complies with a tight smile. “Or am I gonna have to wait here longer.”

Judy Hopps straightens herself.

Steps past.

The door closes behind her.

The world turns.

* * *

His apartment is small. But it's larger than hers. She shares a kitchen and a bathroom, but from what she's seeing he has his own. There are magazines everywhere, and furniture that's seen better days. There are no pictures on the walls, and the kitchen sink is filled with old cereal bowls and surrounded by tearless shampoo and dish soap.

He stands in the middle of it, and fits his mess.

She's ready to leave as soon as she's there. Prepared to write down that the complaint was filed. That she talked to citizens amicably with perfect bedside manner. One more bribe could get this Nick character to call in and praise her badge number over the line. And she'd be a real cop even if all it took her was a month on traffic duty and a civil suit and then she's turning around to agree with him when-

(wait)

(hold)

(breathe)

“See,” says Nick, stepping over a pile of towels on the floor, covering a historians collection of stains. “Nothing.”

“Nothing…” Judy repeats. Her nose wiggles. Nothing - _something_ \- “Then why… why do I smell-”  
  
Milky, soft. Familiar from far too many years on farms filled with laughter and feet and tantrums and-

She's looking for something that shouldn't be there. And even if she was looking for one thing, this was another, and she noses the air with a sort of building assumption that twists her gut and leaves her lungs stiff. The door is still closed, and the space around her is beginning to feel tight. She breathes through it, steps forward again. Something flashes from in the corner, past a little milk crate lined with blankets, and she thinks she sees one of the lawnmower poppers her father had bought them each for their third birthday. The fox standing near her swallows.

He smells like powder, Judy thinks.

“Look, you came in. You got all your nice little details. Congratulations! You can be a real cop! Go fill out some paperwork- that sounds like you’re living the dream anyway. So can you please go because I have work and-”

“Hold on.” She twitches an ear. Catches something. Small. Pattering.

From behind her, Nick snarls. “Look. Officer. You really need to-”

There’s a soft cry.

Judy’s ears turn to the bedroom. "That" (breathe) "was a child."

She can just barely hear the click of nails against the walls, _ticking_ as Nick leans against it for fast support. “Oh fuck…” he says. “Oh _fuck_.”

The world keeps turning.

But first, it stops-

(holds its breath)

-to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Judy meets GB. Nick wonders if things are worth the trouble. Belleweather is mayor. Everyone's screwed. 
> 
> (And Nick Wilde talks to his mother)
> 
>  
> 
> All work is edited by me. I do not require a beta. 
> 
> Any (and perhaps all) errors will be found over time.
> 
> This will be updated and corrected and added to and changed every five minutes because that's who I am.
> 
> (please check out the wonderful artwork by nicolaswildes- it's incredible!)


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